I 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

RIVERSIDE 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 


BY 
EDWARD  ALSWORTH  ROSS,  PH.D.,  LL.D. 

Professor  of  Sociology  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 
Author  of  "SOCIAL  CONTROL,"  "SOCIAL  PSYCHOL- 
OGY,"   "THE  PRINCIPLES    or  SOCIOLOGY," 
CHANGING  CHINESE,"  etc.,  etc. 


NEW  YORK 

THE  CENTURY  CO. 

1922 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
THE  CENTTJBY  Co. 


I'BINTED  IK  17.    8.   A. 


To 
MR.  AND  MRS.  WILLIAM  ALLEN  WHITE 

FORWARD-LOOKING    DEMOCRATS 

or  THE  AMERICAN  TYPE 

THIS  BOOK 

Is  DEDICATED 


INTRODUCTION 

We  moderns  are  like  mariners  on  a  ship  sail- 
ing an  uncharted  sea.  We  cannot  lay  our  course 
in  the  light  of  the  experience  of  our  ancestors. 
None  of  them  ever  plowed  these  waters;  that  is 
to  say,  before  us  no  folk  ever  practised  machine 
production,  let  its  daughters  work  away  from 
home,  bestowed  leisure  upon  multitudes  of  its 
wives,  saved  its  babies,  vanquished  disease,  and 
slew  its  foes  by  mechanism,  to  the  extent  that  we 
do.  So  study  of  the  past  can  not  reassure  us 
as  to  how  these  things  are  going  to  work  out. 

Science  and  Invention  have  borne  us  away 
from  the  routes  followed  by  any  previous  society. 
They  have  brought  us  into  strange  latitudes 
where  we  have  nothing  to  go  by.  And  they  do 
not  allow  us  to  feel  our  way  deliberately,  put 
out  scout-boats,  take  soundings.  They  hurry  us 
on.  So  the  best  we  can  do  is  to  set  watchers 
to  scan  the  horizon.  The  sociologist  is  just  a 
man  in  a  crow's  nest  who  knows  no  more  of 
this  sea  than  his  fellows.  But  from  his  position 


INTRODUCTION 

he  will  catch  sight  of  coming  dangers — shoals, 
sunken  rocks,  derelicts,  cross-currents — before 
they  are  seen  by  those  on  deck. 

This  book  is  an  attempt  of  an  observer  at  the 
masthead  to  judge  the  probable  course  of  the 
ship,  to  call  out  what  lies  ahead  and  how  the 
ship  must  bear  to  starboard  or  to  port  in  order 
to  avoid  trouble. 

EDWARD  ALSWORTH  Boss. 
MADISON,  WISCONSIN, 
June,  1922. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PAOI 

I  THE  MENACE  OP  MIGRATING  PEOPLES  ...      3 

End  of  the  mollescan  stage  of  mankind. — la  the  na- 
tion to  become  a  human  hodge-podge? — Why  popula- 
tion pressure  in  Asia  will  increase. — Adaptive  fecun- 
dity.— Suicide  of  the  adaptive  peoples  in  the  pres- 
ence of  low-standard  immigrants.— -Coming  barriers 
to  migration. — Possible  war  between  the  blind 
breeders  and  the  prudent  breeders. 

II  THE  NECESSITY  OF  AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY  .     16 

A  family  of  sixteen  as  a  pattern. — Is  there  menace 
of  "race  suicide"? — Death-rates  falling  faster  than 
birth-rates. — The  balking  of  Azrael. — Saving  the  in- 
nocents.— Possible  growth  of  numbers  in  this  country 
by  2000  A.  D. — An  endless  vista  of  family  restriction. 
— Why  we  dare  not  use  all  of  our  natural  fertility. 

III  FOLK  DEPLETION  AND  RURAL  DECLINE  .     .     34 

Soundings  in  retrogressive  America. — Strange  apathy 
of  young  people. — Deadness  to  higher  things. — Decline 
of  religion,  education,  family  morals,  and  community 
spirit. — Yet  the  folk  are  not  degenerate. — What  hap- 
pens when  a  community  loses  its  cream. — How  blight 
falls  upon  the  leader  less  neighborhood. — Program  for 
regenerating  the  stagnant  rural  communities. 

IV  DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER  ....     52 

Vanishing  of  free  land  in  the  United  States. — Secret 
of  the  appeal  of  the  conservation  movement. — Why 
the  farmers  have  become  docile. — "Back  to  the  land. 
— Less  welcome  for  the  immigrant. — Rising  cost  of 
living. — Appearance  of  a  farm  labor  class. — American 
optimism. — Free  land  as  the  mother  of  social  and 
(political  democracy. — The  "spiritual  West." — How 
the  passing  of  the  frontier  affects  personal  liberty. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB  PAGE 

V  THE  CHANGING  DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN    78 

The  old  home  industries. — The  home-made  displaced 
by  the  factory-made. — Migration  of  the  daughters 
out  into  industry. — The  wives  of  the  well-to-do  ac- 
quire leisure. — Their  quest  of  "culture." — Are  women 
•taken  more  seriously? — What  the  wives  have  to  pay 
for  being  "supported." — Is  access  to  the  job  turn- 
ing girls  away  from  matrimony? — Will  it  masculinize 
them? 

VI  WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD  ....  100 

Culture  transmitted  chiefly  through  men. — Is  this  to 
woman's  disadvanage? — How  men  and  women  differ  in 
instincts. — Why  vice  is  chiefly  a  masculine  failing. — 
How  men  have  stamped  their  innate  pugnacity  upon 
the  penal  system,  politics,  business,  the  state,  and 
religion. — Women  should  be  critical  and  suspicious 
of  man-made  institutions. 

VII  PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS  ....  121 

Charity  as  a  cloak. — Private,  unendowed  charities 
static  rather  than  dynamic  in  their  influence. — Their 
administrators  conservative. — The  effective  prevention 
of  poverty  causes  disturbance  to  some  business  in- 
terests.— Y.  M.  C.  A.  difficulties. — Problems  of  set- 
tlement wardens. — Philanthropy  is  no  substitute  for 
social  reform. — The  proper  sphere  of  private  philan- 
thropy. 

VIII  PROHIBITION  AS  THE  SOCIOLOGIST  SEES  IT    137 

Opium-smoking  as  a  gangrene. — Alcohol  as  the  vice 
of  the  Occident. — Why  prohibition  had  to  come. — 
Commercialization  of  the  liquor  traffic. — Laboratory 
revelations  as  to  alcohol. — Race  and  strong  drink. — 
)How  South  Europeans  became  temperate. — An  al- 
ternative to  prohibition. — How  the  "dry"  regime 
affects  woman,  the  home,  and  the  child. — The  glass 
and  good  fellowship. — Liquor  and  politics. 

IX  THE  LEGAX  PROFESSION  FROM  THE  SOCIAL 

POINT  OF  VIEW 161 

Lawyers  serve  individuals  rather  than  society. — How 
the  gravitation  of  abler  lawyers  to  the  richer  side 
pulls  institutions  out  of  plumb. — Lawyers  largely 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

OHAFTM  PAO1 

waste  their  efforts  against  one  another. — But  the  law- 
yer keeps  himself  in  the  best  of  intellectual  trim. — 
Why  society  should  lean  less  on  the  legal  profession. 

X  THE  CONSCIENCE  OF  THE  EXPERT  ....  1G9 

Spread  of  the  laboratory  technique  into  the  field  of 
social  investigation. — The  conscience  of  the  trained 
inquirer. — How  it  differs  from  other  types  of  con- 
science.— Its  strength  and  its  services  to  the  public 
weal. 

XI  TRAINING  CITIZENS  WITH  "SPUNK"  FOR  SO- 

CIAL SERVICE 174 

Spread  of  the  combat  idea  in  business  and  the  profes- 
sions.— Commercialism  as  a  religion. — The  competing 
social  service  ideal. — All  useful  occupations  "affected 
with  a  public  interest." — WThat  ethics  our  schools 
should  teach. 

XII  FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE  ....  183 

The  dismissal  wage  in  Russia  under  Nicholas  II; 
under  Kerensky. — Importance  of  economic  security 
for  the  employed  man. — Standards  of  public  or  non- 
gainful  employers. — "Hire  and  fire"  policy  of  indus- 
trial employers. — Its  inhumanity. — Benefits  to  be  ex- 
pected from  a  legal  dismissal  wage. — How  it  could 
be  made  to  work. 

XIII  FREEDOM   OF   COMMUNICATION   AND   THE 

STRUGGLE  FOR  RIGHT 195 

Decline  of  gossip  and  triviality. — More  attention 
available  for  matters  of  real  import. — The  public 
the  last  court  of  appeal  of  wronged  classes. — En- 
deavor of  local  beneficiaries  of  injustice  to  throttle 
publicity. — Free  communication  still  all-important 
for  labor. — No  excuse  for  denying  it  in  labor  con- 
troversies.— Evil  effects  of  repression. — Ventilated 
grievances  not  dangerous  to  the  social  order. 

XIV  WAR  AS  DETERMINER 214 

Martial  determinism. — The  invention  of  weapons  has 
been  fateful  for  peoples  and  civilizations. — Modern 
warfare  capitalistic.— Consequences. — Significance  of 
the  comparative  strength  of  Attack  and  Defense. — 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

The  strengthening  of  Defense  makes  for  peace. — 
War  may  continue  mistress  of  the  destiny  of  society. 
— There  will  be  a  "next  war." — State  worship. — Ef- 
fect of  democracy,  of  woman's  suffrage  on  the  future 
of  war. — No  salvation  of  the  nations  save  in  union. 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 


THE  MENACE  OP  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 
§   1 

T  N  1868  Anson  Burlingame  negotiated  a  treaty 
•••in  which  the  United  States  of  America  and 
the  emperor  of  China  cordially  recognized  "the 
inherent  and  inalienable  right  of  man  to  change 
his  home  and  his  allegiance."  Fourteen  years 
later  our  Chinese  Exclusion  Act  made  a  jest  of 
this  fine  flourish  of  American  political  idealism. 
It  has  now  become  apparent  that  there  are  other 
sociological  lessons  our  people  will  have  to 
learn  under  the  harsh  tutelage  of  facts. 

§  2 

In  the  past  the  chief  guaranty  of  stability  in 
the  relations  of  races  and  peoples  has  been  hu- 

3 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

man  inertia.  Most  men  lived  and  died  within 
a  few  leagues  of  their  birthplace.  Under  the 
empire  of  habit  they  bore  their  lot,  be  it  never 
so  hard,  without  reflecting  that  a  brighter  life 
might  be  awaiting  them  overseas.  Only  the  ex- 
ceptional were  gifted  with  the  imagination 
and  courage  to  pluck  up  and  wander  forth  in 
the  hope  of  bettering  their  condition. 

But  this  molluscan  stage  is  not  likely  to  last 
much  longer.  Since  the  birth  of  men  now  liv- 
ing, the  conditions  of  the  mass  movement  of 
peoples  have  been  utterly  revolutionized.  Not 
only  has  steam  on  land  and  sea  made  travel 
swift  and  safe  and  cheap,  but  the  long-distance 
carriage  of  human  beings  has  been  organized 
as  never  before.  To-day  a  peasant  living  within 
sight  of  the  rock  of  Prometheus  or  the  cedars 
of  Lebanon  may  buy  a  through  ticket  to  a  fron- 
tier point  in  the  Canadian  Northwest.  For  the 
sake  of  the  profit  to  be  extracted  from  them,  pen- 
niless laborers  are  gathered,  despatched,  and 
cared  for  during  their  long  journey  to  a  desti- 
nation on  the  other  side  of  the  globe  as  if  they 
were  commercial  wares. 

In  the  villages  of  southwestern  Asia  pas- 
senger-tickets to  some  remote  zone  of  oppor- 

4 


MENACE  OF  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 

tunity  are  hawked  about  as  newspapers  and 
apples  are  cried  on  our  streets.  The  seller  will 
not  only  incite  the  peasant  to  migrate,  but  will 
take  a  mortgage  on  his  home  for  the  passage- 
money  or  accept  the  bond  of  some  relative  that 
the  migrant  will  within  a  year  remit  the  sum 
advanced.  Parties  of  "greenhorns,"  through- 
billed  from  their  native  village  by  a  professional 
money-lender,  are  met  at  the  right  points  by  his 
confederates,  coached  on  the  answers  to  make  to 
the  immigration  authorities,  and  delivered 
finally  to  some  "boarding  boss"  in  this  country 
who  is  recruiting  labor  on  commission  for  a  con- 
struction gang. 

Besides  such  means  of  detaching  the  limpet 
from  his  rock,  local  adhesions  are  everywhere 
being  loosened  by  the  spread  of  the  capacity  to 
read  and  by  the  prodding  of  the  minds  of  the 
masses  by  the  newspapers. 

So,  for  better  or  worse,  we  have  entered  on 
the  era  of  facile  migration.  No  longer  is  popu- 
lation rdoTetHltonaTtree  in  its  natal  soil.  Man- 
kind deliquesces  and  flows  in  broad  streams 
toward  any  place  on  earth  which  holds  out  the 
prospect  of  a  better  living.  The  readiness  of 
petty  folk  to  up  and  away  on  slight  inducement 

5 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

is  a  new  thing,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose 
it  a  passing  phenomenon.  On  the  contrary,  so 
far  as  we  can  look  ahead,  the  means  and  desire  of 
removing  from  one's  native  land  to  another  will 
grow.  The  collecting  and  forwarding  of  human 
beings  will  become  a  business  and,  like  any  other 
business,  it  will  be  pushed. 

§  3 

To-day  every  people  desires  to  be  a  nation, 
that  is,  a  spiritual  unit.  In  the  Koman  Empire 
this  ideal  played  no  part,  and  there  resulted  an 
amazing  hodgepodge  of  population.  We  mod- 
erns are  afraid  of  such  collections  of  human 
odds  and  ends  as  came  to  people  Roman  Africa 
or  Syria  or  the  valley  of  the  Nile,  because  we 
realize  that  always  such  muddled  mixing  begets 
absolutist  government.  Dreading  a  government 
not  subject  to  the  collective  will  of  the  governed, 
we  wish  a  people  to  be  like-minded  enough  to 
develop  a  common  opinion  upon  political  ques- 
tions. When  private  conduct  and  public  au^ 
thority  are  obedient  to  public  opinion,  a  nation 
is  able  almost  to  dispense  with  coercion.  Fur- 
thermore, spiritual  oneness  prevents  the  rise  of 
caste  barriers  to  association  and  intermarriage. 

6 


Now,  cheap  travel  and  full  steerages  make 
mock  of  this  ideal  of  nationality.  Any  prosper- 
ous country  which  leaves  its  doors  ajar  will 
presently  find  itself  not  the  home  of  a  nation, 
but  a  "polyglot  boarding-house."  The  thriving 
areas  of  the  world  will  come  to  be  populated  by 
a  confused  party-colored  mass,  of  divers  lan- 
guages and  religions  and  of  the  most  discord- 
ant moral  and  economic  standards.  Coolies  at 
the  breech-clout  stage  of  attire,  such  as  you  find 
in  the  back  districts  of  the  Far  East,  will  jostle 
the  descendants  of  the  Puritans.  The  enlight- 
ened will  perforce  brush  shoulders  with  idol- 
aters, wearers  of  amulets,  and  believers  in  the 
evil  eye.  In  the  same  labor  market  will  com- 
pete those  who  sit  at  meat  and  those  who  squat 
on  their  heels  about  a  bowl  of  food,  those  who 
insist  on  a  carpet  underfoot  and  those  content 
with  a  dirt  floor,  those  who  honor  their  wives 
and  those  who  make  them  chattels,  those  who 
school  their  children  and  those  who  exploit 
them. 

Invariably,  when  elements  with  such  incom- 
patible traditions  intermingle,  castes  form;  so 
that  the  nation  which  persists  in  welcoming  all 
inoffensive  comers  will  presently  find  its  people 

7 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

going  asunder  into  closed  groups.  The  fact  is, 
removal  from  one  land  to  another  is  becoming 
so  easy  that  any  nation  which  is  economically 
well  off  has  to  choose  whether  it  will  see  caste 
barriers  rise  in  it  or  will  itself  rear  a  barrier 
against  non-assimilable  aliens. 

S     4: 

In  the  masses  of  the  Orient,  which  steam  has 
made  next-door  neighbors  of  ours,  the  family 
customs  and  the  status  of  women  are  such  that 
land  shortage,  overcrowding,  and  economic 
stress  have  no  appreciable  effect  in  checking  the 
flow  of  babies.  With  these  folk  economic  ne- 
cessity does  not  prompt  to  family  limitation.  If 
the  excess  of  births  over  deaths  cannot  be  taken 
care  of  by  the  improvement  of  agriculture  or  the 
rise  of  factory  industry  and  export  trade,  and  the 
people  cannot  migrate,  then  the  growth  of  the 
local  population  is  accompanied  by  deepening 
poverty  and  misery  until  mortality  rises  to  such 
a  degree  that  human  beings  die  as  fast  as  they 
are  born.  At  this  point  population  is  in  equi- 
librium, and  conditions  need  not  become  worse. 
This  is  "the  stationary  state,"  which  the  greater 

8 


MENACE  OF  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 

part  of  the  Asiatics  seem  to  have  reached  cen- 
turies ago. 

Within  a  generation,  thanks  to  Science's  con- 
quest of  disease  and  to  the  improvement  of 
public  sanitation,  the  death-rate  of  the  more  en- 
lightened peoples  has  been  cut  in  two.  In  Nor- 
way or  New  Zealand,  for  example,  not  over  an 
eightieth  of  the  population  die  in  a  year.  Now, 
the  application  of  these  new  means  of  saving 
human  lives  is  upsetting  in  the  Orient  the  ancient 
balance  between  births  and  deaths.  The  West, 
to  be  sure,  sets  the  example  of  a  low  birth-rate  as 
well  as  a  low  death-rate ;  but  the  influences  which 
pull  down  the  death-rate  come  into  operation  in 
the  Orient  much  earlier  than  those  which  pull 
down  the  birth-rate. 

India  and  China  get  pure  water,  hospitals, 
antitoxins,  serums,  and  modern  medicine  before 
later  marriage  for  girls,  the  emancipation  of 
wives,  obligatory  school  attendance,  and  birth- 
control  practices  become  established  among 
them.  During  this  critical  interval,  when  Asiat- 
ics born  at  the  high  Oriental  rate  are  dying 
only  at  the  low  Occidental  rate,  population  will 
tend  to  increase  rapidly,  and  the  surplus,  be- 

0 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

coming  mobile  under  modern  inducements  to 
migrate,  will  move  toward  any  part  of  the  world 
which  promises  an  easier  existence. 

Various  influences  have  spared  western 
Europe  the  grim  experience  of  the  stationary 
state  Asia  has  had.  She  never  reduced  her 
women  to  the  hapless  lot  of  most  Oriental 
women.  Her  access  to  the  New  World  afforded 
relief  from  the  pressure  of  numbers.  Improve- 
ment in  the  industrial  arts,  especially  in  the  last 
centnry  and  a  half,  allowed  population  to  grow 
without  making  life  harder.  The  impending 
deliquescence  of  peoples,  particularly  of  the  con- 
gested and  free-multiplying  Asiatics,  therefore 
opens  to  the  Europeans  and  the  descendants  of 
Europeans  who  find  themselves  in  conditions  of 
comparative  comfort  in  the  younger  regions  of 
the  world  a  truly  appalling  prospect  of  a  human 
deluge. 

Nor  is  this  all.  Within  the  last  half-century 
a  most  hopeful  tendency  has  shown  itself  in 
some  parts  of  western  Europe,  in  Australasia, 
and  in  North  America.  With  the  penetration 
of  intelligence  and  individualistic  democracy  to 
the  broader  layers  of  the  people,  there  appears 
a  phenomenon  which  rarely,  if  ever,  has  showrn 

10 


MENACE  OF  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 

itself  before  on  any  large  scale.  This  is  adap- 
tive fecundity,  or  a  birth-rate  accommodated  to 
the  economic  outlook  for  the  next  generation. 

When  foresight  and  self-control  in  respect  to 
family  size  have  become  general,  a  people  is  in 
the  way  of  attaining  a  degree  of  comfort  and  an 
amenity  of  life  such  as  can  never  be  enjoyed  for 
long  by  a  people  of  blind  fecundity.  For  its 
growth  is  regulated  by  its  standard  of  living, 
and  with  every  improvement  in  agriculture  or 
industry  it  raises  its  standard  instead  of  allow- 
ing the  slack  to  be  taken  up  by  mere  increase 
of  numbers.  No  limit  can  be  assigned  to  the 
possible  amelioration  of  the  lot  of  the  masses 
when  they  are  canny  enough  to  "salt  down" 
their  economic  gains  in  higher  standards  of  liv- 
ing rather  than  in  rearing  big  families. 

Once  a  people  adapts  its  production  of  chil- 
dren to  the  economic  prospect,  the  free  inflow 
of  blindly  fecund  immigrants  has  a  most  calam- 
itous effect  upon  its  self-perpetuation.  Sense- 
ing  the  curtailment  of  its  children's  chances,  it 
withholds  offspring  in  just  the  degree  that  the 
alien  element  expands.  In  handing  on  the  torch 
of  life  it  seems  to  act  on  the  principle,  "After 
you,  my  dear  Alphonse!"  For  this  behavior 

11 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

the  writer  coined  twenty  years  ago  the  phrase 
"race  suicide,"  which  unfortunately  has  come  to 
be  applied  to  every  form,  of  prudence  in  the  mat- 
ter of  family. 

For  a  people  which  has  arrived  at  an  adaptive 
birth-rate  to  admit  the  surplus  population  be- 
gotten by  other  peoples  which  multiply  with- 
out taking  thought  for  the  morrow  is  virtually 
to  cut  its  own  throat.  To  vary  the  metaphor, 
once  the  camel  has  been  allowed  to  put  his  head 
into  the  tent,  the  process  of  displacement  goes 
on  quietly,  but  inexorably,  until  the  camel  is 
the  sole  occupant  of  the  tent.  It  is  a  painless 
death,  to  be  sure,  which  extends  over  a  century 
or  two  and  proceeds  without  clash  or  scandal, 
but  no  people  which  foresees  it  will  adhere  to 
the  fatal  policy  of  the  open  door. 

§  5 

Prudence  in  progeny  is  so  much  the  product  of 
circumstance  and  accident  that  it  would  be  ab- 
surd to  claim  that  its  practisers  are  ipso  facto 
superior  types,  whereas  the  prolific  peoples  are 
inferior.  Nevertheless,  it  is  certain  that  the 
brighter  races  will  be  the  earliest  to  look 

12 


MENACE  OF  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 

ahead  and  limit  the  size  of  the  family,  while  the 
dullard  races  will  be  the  last  to  abandon  the 
blind  fecundity  which  characterizes  the  animal. 
During  the  two  or  three  centuries  that  will  be 
required  for  the  practice  of  adaptive  fecundity 
to  become  general  among  mankind,  unhindered 
immigration,  by  favoring  the  blind  breeders  at 
the  expense  of  the  prudent  breeders,  would  en- 
able the  stupid  and  inert  peoples  to  poach  on 
the  preserves  of  the  bright  and  aspiring  peoples. 
Since  the  latter  will  not  allow  themselves  to  be 
elbowed  off  the  earth  by  the  superfluous  chil- 
dren of  the  former,  it  is  certain  that  every  ad- 
vanced nation  will  rear  immigration  barriers. 
Dogmas  of  the  open  door  and  the  melting-pot 
become  absurd  in  a  time  when  population  rolls 
hither  and  thither  about  the  globe  like  particles 
of  quicksilver. 

The  barriers  with  which  each  national  com- 
fort area  will  endeavor  to  surround  itself  will 
not  obstruct  the  passage  of  culture  or  culture- 
bearers.  Travelers,  officials,  students,  scholars, 
merchants,  and  artists  will  be  able  to  go  any- 
where without  molestation.  It  is  only  the  broad 
masses  that  will  be  hindered  from  migration. 

13 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

f*      ft 

One  reason  for  the  hesitation  of  this  and  other 
nations  about  joining  in  a  league  of  nations  is 
dread  of  losing  control'  over  immigration.  Since 
every  people  has  an  interest  in  the  immigration 
policy  of  any  people,  a  strong  effort  will  be  made 
in  the  interest  of  world  peace  to  have  all  dis- 
putes between  governments  arising  out  of  im- 
migration submitted  to  arbitration.  This,  how- 
ever, would  tend  to  the  equalization  of  peoples 
and  races  in  rights  of  admission  to  each  country, 
and  would  thereby  prevent  a  people  discrimi- 
nating among  the  streams  of  immigrants  which 
offer  themselves.  But,  without  such  'discrim- 
ination, it  cannot  remain  in  any  sense  a  spirit- 
ual unity.  Hence,  it  is  likely  that  immigration 
barriers  will  be  even  more  jealously  reserved 
from  international  control  than  tariff  barriers 
have  been. 

Will  the  crowded  and  blindly  multiplying 
peoples  tamely  submit  thus  to  be  excluded  from 
areas  on  which  they  might  unload  their  surplus 
population?  May  they  not  make  the  rearing  of 
such  dikes  a  casus  belli?  Even  now  the  Jap- 
anese show  themselves  restive  in  the  presence  of 
anything  which  savors  of  exclusion,  and  it  is 

14 


MENACE  OF  MIGRATING  PEOPLES 

not  hard  to  foresee  a  time  when  the  peoples  of 
India  and  China  and  Siam  and  Egypt  may  chal- 
lenge the  barriers  which  keep  them  out  of  all 
the  more  desirable  markets  for  their  labor. 

Nevertheless,  while  the  overpopulous  nations 
are  certain  to  become  aware  and  resentful  of 
exclnsion,  as  at  once  an  unjust  handicap  and 
an  imputation  of  inferiority,  the  number  of 
peoples  resolved  to  withdraw  from  the  game  of 
competitive  fecundity  constantly  grows.  We 
have  seen  Canada,  Australasia,  South  Africa, 
and  several  South  American  republics  come  into 
line  with  the  United  States  in  the  matter  of  im- 
migration. As  the  dense  populations  become 
more  mobile,  the  sense  of  pressure  will  grow 
until,  perhaps,  Europe  will  make  common  cause 
with  the  younger  societies  in  recognizing  in  in- 
ternational law  the  right  of  every  nation  to  sur- 
round itself  with  such  in  migration  barrier  as 
seems  good  to  it.  Whether  the  pullulating 
peoples  will  acquiesce  in  any  such  principle  is 
on  the  knees  of  the  gods.  It  may  be  that  the 
most  terrific  of  all  wars,  which  would  involve, 
no  doubt,  the  entire  human  race,  will  be  fought 
on  this  issue. 


15 


II 

THE  NECESSITY  OF  AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY  1 

X         J 

"VTOT  long  ago  President  Harding  noticed  in 
*•*  the  photogravure  section  of  a  Sunday  news- 
paper the  picture  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Domenico 
Zaccahea  of  New  York  City  and  their  sixteen 
children ;  whereupon  he  wrote  Mrs.  Zaccahea  con- 
gratulating her  upon  being  the  mother  of  such  a 
splendid  brood.  The  gesture  won  the  President 
friends,  no  doubt,  but  did  it  strike  a  note  which 
needs  to  be  struck?  The  father  of  this  family 
is  a  porter  at  twenty  dollars  a  week.  There  is 
no  evidence  that  he  has  unusual  gifts  to  endow 
his  children  with.  By  complimenting  him  the 
President  of  the  United  States  encourages  our 
millions  of  commonplace  citizens  to  court  the 
gratitude  of  their  country  by  begetting  families 
of  sixteen  children.  Is  the  country  in  need  of 
them? 

i  "Proceedings  of  the  American  Sociological  Society";  Vol. 
XVI. 

16 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

The  other  day  I  greeted  a  former  student  of 
mine  who  was  born  in  1830  when  the  world  had 
had  but  half  as  many  inhabitants  as  to-day.  In 
her  lifetime  she  has  seen  850  millions  of  per- 
sons added  to  the  human  race. 

The  Divine  command,  "Be  fruitful  and  multi- 
ply and  replenish  the  earth,"  was  uttered  to 
seven  people  who  were  all  that  remained  of  man- 
kind after  the  Flood.  There  are  now  £50,000,000 
times  as  many  people  as  there  were  then.  How 
much  longer  is  this  emergency  mandate  to  be 
considered  as  still  in  force? 

Race  suicide? 

Since  this  phrase  was  launched  twenty  years 
ago,  portentous  bigwigs  have  been  wont  to  send 
a  chill  down  the  spine  of  their  hearers  by  pictur- 
ing the  enlightened  stocks  and  peoples  as  headed 
for  extinction  because  the  full  quivers  of  olden 
time  are  becoming  rare.  The  clergyman  with 
few  children  or  none  at  all  has  felt  entitled  to 
thunder  like  a  Hebrew  prophet  at  couples  who 
stop  at  three  or  four  children  whereas  their 
grandparents  gave  the  world  ten  or  a  dozen. 
Family  restriction — which  first  showed  itself  in 
the  vital  statistics  of  France  about  the  middle  of 
the  last  century,  became  visible  in  England  in 

17 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

1878,  began  leaving  its  mark  on  Belgium, 
Holland,  Switzerland,  and  Australia  in  the 
eighties,  attracted  notice  in  Italy,  Hungary,  and 
Finland  just  before  the  close  of  the  century,  and 
appeared  in  Germany  and  Austria  in  the  last 
decade  before  the  war — has  been  pointed  to  as  if 
it  were  a  spreading  leprosy.  No  one  stops  to 
consider  where  these  peoples  would  find  them- 
selves to-day  if  they  had  gone  on  having  progeny 
in  the  old  happy-go-lucky  fashion. 

Because  it  affords  such  a  splendid  text  for 
Jeremiads  and  because  a  hot  controversy  has 
raged  about  the  morality  of  certain  restrictive 
practices,  the  shrinkage  in  the  size  of  families 
has  attracted  an  enormous  amount  of  attention. 
Every  thoughtful  person  has  heard  of  it,  has 
been  urged  to  confront  it  as  "a  grave  problem." 
On  the  other  hand,  few  but  statisticians,  life 
insurance  actuaries,  and  public  health  officers 
have  noticed  the  extraordinary  lowering  of  the 
death-rate  which  has  been  brought  about  in  the 
last  forty  years.  No  one  has  viewed  it  "with 
alarm"  or  lifted  a  trumpet  against  it.  It  has 
stolen  upon  us  quietly  like  a  genial  south  wind 
in  February,  like  a  night  drizzle  after  an  August 
drought.  And  yet  in  most  countries,  so  far  as 

18 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

population  growth  is  concerned,  it  quite  balances 
and  neutralizes  that  shortage  of  the  baby  crop 
which  has  inspired  so  many  gloomy  prophecies. 

The  thing  is  as  plain  as  the  black  and  white 
squares  on  a  chess-board.  Take  the  fourteen 
European  countries  which  have  worth-while 
vital  statistics  running  back  for  forty  years  or 
more.  Compare  their  records  for  the  half -decade 
1881-85  with  those  of  the  last  half-decade  before 
the  war,  viz.,  1906-10.  You  will  find  that  in 
nine  of  them  the  death-rate  fell  farther  than  the 
birth-rate ;  so  that  in  1910  their  natural  increase 
was  actually  greater  than  it  had  been  a  quarter 
of  a  century  earlier,  before  forethought  and 
prudence  in  the  matter  of  family  had  given  much 
evidence  of  its  presence  among  the  masses. 
Taking  the  average  for  the  fourteen  peoples,  it 
appears  that  while  the  number  of  annual  births 
per  thousand  of  the  general  population  was  five 
less  at  the  end  of  the  period,  the  number  of 
annual  deaths  per  thousand  was  five  and  one 
half  less! 

Impatient  with  the  limitations  of  ink-on-paper, 
a  certain  yellow-journalist  used  to  wish,  when  he 
had  something  of  great  moment  to  communicate 
to  the  public,  that  he  could  "make  a  noise 

19 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

resembling  thunder."  The  statistician  laments 
that  he  cannot  thunder  to  a  public  which  admires 
families  of  the  Zaccahea  type  that  in  the  last 
quarter-century  for  which  we  have  complete 
statistics  (1881-85  to  1906-10)  the  death-rate  of 
Finland,  Norway,  Sweden,  and  Scotland  declined 
about  a  fifth.  That  of  Austria,  Belgium, 
Denmark,  England  and  Wales,  Hungary,  Italy, 
Spain,  and  Switzerland  was  lowered  about  a 
fourth;  while  that  of  Australia,  Bulgaria,  and 
Holland  was  reduced  about  a  third.  In  the 
same  period  the  mortality  of  the  dozen  chief 
cities  of  the  world  was  reduced  by  more  than  one 
third. 

Our  own  country  has  been  tardy  in  collecting 
vital  statistics.  However,  we  have  this  most 
significant  fact.  In  1900  the  death-rate  in  our 
"registration  area" — which  then  included  two 
fifths  of  the  American  people — was  17.6  per 
thousand  of  the  population.  In  1919  in  a  regis- 
tration area  which  had  expanded  until  it  in- 
cluded three  fourths  of  us,  the  rate  was  12.9 
— a  reduction  of  a  fourth  in  nineteen  years! 

According  to  the  committee  on  elimination 
of  waste  in  industry  of  the  American  Engineer- 
ing Council  the  duration  of  life  in  America  has 

20 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

been  increased  by  five  years  since  1909.  In  the 
last  eight  years  the  expectation  of  life  of  the  in- 
dustrial policy-holders  of  the  Metropolitan  Life 
Insurance  Co.  has  been  extended  from  forty-six 
and  one  half  years  to  fifty-one  years. 

§  2 

Save  our  ingenuity  in  devising  contrivances 
for  blotting  out  human  life,  nothing  in  our  time 
is  so  sensational  as  our  success  in  vanquishing 
certain  diseases.  For  example,  in  1911  in  the 
United  States  the  deaths  per  100,000  population 
from  the  fevers,  including  typhoid,  typhus,  and 
malaria,  were  only  one  seventy-third  as  numer- 
ous as  the  deaths  from  these  causes  in  British 
India.  These  fevers  are  not  tropical  maladies 
and  there  is  no  climatic  or  geographic  reason  for 
their  great  prevalence  in  India.  Old  records 
show  that  these  diseases  played  havoc  in  this 
country  a  century  ago.  The  reason  why  they 
scourge  us  so  little  to-day  is  that  public  author- 
ity has  stepped  in  and  applied  the  discoveries 
of  preventive  medicine. 

It  is  this  agency  that  has  chased  from  us  those 
grisly  servitors  of  Azrael,  bubonic  plague,  chol- 
era, yellow  fever,  and  smallpox.  Moreover, 

21 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

thanks  to  increasing  personal  and  social  appro- 
priation of  the  fruits  of  medical  advance,  an- 
other four  of  his  reapers,  viz.,  typhoid,  diph- 
theria and  croup,  tuberculosis,  and  pneumonia 
have  had  their  sickles  dulled.  Even  at  our  pres- 
ent stage  of  knowledge,  did  the  public  but  will  it, 
they  would  have  not  much  more  power  over  us 
than  cholera  has. 

The  progress  of  child-saving  alone  suffices  to 
offset  a  large  part  of  the  fall  in  the  birth-rate. 
Peeps  into  the  infant  mortality  of  the  less  ad- 
vanced peoples  suggest  that  right  down  through 
history  from  a  third  to  two  thirds  of  those  born 
have  perished  in  the  cradle.  A  decade  ago  a 
quarter  of  the  babies  born  in  Hungary  and  Rus- 
sia failed  to  live  a  year.  In  Chile  in  1913  I 
found  the  loss  to  be  a  third,  in  some  cities 
47  per  cent. !  A  decade  ago  Moscow  parents 
were  losing  half  their  infants  within  a  twelve- 
month. As  for  the  Orient,  the  fate  of  its  in- 
nocents is  horrifying.  In  1910  in  the  innermost 
province  of  China  an  American  medical  mission- 
ary with  twenty  years  of  practice  gave  me  his 
opinion  that  from  75  to  85  per  cent,  of  the  chil- 
dren born  in  his  district  die  before  the  end  of 
the  second  year.  The  first  census  the  Japanese 

22 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

took  in  Formosa  showed  that  half  of  the  babies 
born  to  the  great  Chinese  population  there  do 
not  live  as  long  as  six  months. 

On  the  other  hand,  where  the  lessons  of  mod- 
ern hygiene  and  medicine  have  been  well  conned, 
infants  are  saved  with  a  success  that  our  fore- 
fathers would  have  attributed  to  magic.  Al- 
ready there  are  perhaps  a  dozen  peoples  that 
are  getting  more  than  nine  tenths  of  their  chil- 
dren through  the  first  year  of  life.  Our  country 
is  near  the  foot  of  this  enviable  class  but,  never- 
theless, there  are  twenty-five  American  cities 
which  save  nineteen  babies  out  of  twenty.  It 
is  in  New  Zealand,  however,  that  the  wee  ones 
bear  a  charmed  life.  In  that  happy  land  there 
are  good-sized  cities  that  lose  the  first  year  only 
one  infant  in  twenty-seven! 

§  3 

That  in  our  huge  composite  American  pop- 
ulation clogged  with  some  extremely  backward 
elements  Death  should  take,  year  after  year,  but 
one  in  seventy  or  one  in  seventy-five  is  an  utterly 
new  thing  in  the  experience  of  peoples.  Even 
if  we  were  a  stationary  people  and  not  an  ex- 
panding people,  I  suppose  that  only  one  in  fifty 

23 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

or  one  in  fifty-five  would  die  in  a  twelvemonth. 
In  all  the  life  of  our  race,  extending  over  a  thous- 
and centuries  and  more,  the  like  of  this  has  never 
been  known.  It  behooves  us  to  adapt  our  be- 
havior to  it  as  we  adapt  our  behavior  to  arti- 
ficial light  or  power  machinery  or  the  auto- 
mobile. But  we  see  these  things,  so  we  recog- 
nize at  once  the  necessity  of  conforming  our  con- 
duct to  them.  On  the  other  hand,  most  of  us 
do  not  see  this  latter-day  crippling  of  Azrael  and 
therefore  do  not  realize  that  any  change  in  our 
standards  of  judgment  is  called  for. 

For  example,  through  its  first  millennium  and 
a  half — during  which  its  doctrines  crystallized — 
the  Christian  church  was  in  the  presence  of  a 
human  mortality  which  must  have  been  from 
two  to  four  times  that  which  we  experience  to- 
day. Naturally  the  church  became  fixed  in  the 
idea  that  overpopulation  is  nothing  to  worry 
about  and  in  her  profound  wisdom  she  branded 
as  a  sin  the  deliberate  curtailment  of  conjugal 
fecundity.  Can  this  position  be  maintained  in- 
definitely into  the  future  in  view  of  the  astound- 
ing success  of  modern  medical  science  and  sani- 
tation in  enabling  people  to  live  out  a  normal 
life  term? 

24 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

§  4 

If  only  the  good  men  who  are  so  dogmatic  in 
this  matter  would  condescend  to  apply  the  test 
of  arithmetic! 

Conceive  that  as  a  people  we  came  under  the 
conviction  of  sin  with  respect  to  our  current 
widespread  practice  of  restricting  the  size  of  the 
family.  Suppose  that,  while  keeping  mortality 
down  to  thirteen  per  thousand,  our  women 
would  feel  it  their  duty  to  emulate  the  prolificacy 
of  the  hausfraus  of  Prussia  during  the  decade  be- 
fore the  war  when  the  Kaiser  constantly  incited 
them  to  produce  what  turned  out  to  be  "cannon- 
fodder."  Ignore  migration  into  or  out  of  this 
country.  Well,  then,  by  the  end  of  this  century 
the  United  States  would  contain  more  people 
than  all  Europe  does  to-day. 

Suppose  again  that  while  preserving  human 
life  with  our  present  success  we  should  for  the 
next  seventy-eight  years  have  children  at  the 
present  rate  of  the  Spaniards,  the  Portuguese, 
and  the  Italians.  In  that  case,  the  year  2000A.  D. 
would  see  the  population  of  our  country  more 
than  five  hundred  millions. 

However,  the  Teutons  taught  us  to  stigma- 
tize the  Latins  as  "decadent,"  and  there  is,  in- 

25 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

deed,  reason  for  suspecting  that  in  these  peoples 
a  great  many  couples  have  no  more  children  than 
they  think  they  can  provide  for.  Their  upper 
class  and  intelligentsia  are  by  no  means  care- 
less multipliers.  Let  us  turn,  then,  to  the 
simple  and  unspoiled  people  of  the  Balkans.  If 
American  women  should  give  themselves  to  child- 
bearing  with  the  whole-heartedness  of  the  women 
of  Bulgaria  and  Rumania,  by  the  close  of  this 
century  our  country,  if  it  kept  its  present  mortal- 
ity, would  boast  as  many  human  beings  as  there 
are  now  in  all  Asia  and  Africa ! 

Go  a  bit  further.  Suppose  that  American 
womanhood  rose  still  more  nobly  to  the  demands 
of  their  heaven-ordained  destiny.  Imagine  that 
they  bore  children  as  freely  as  the  secluded  wives 
of  British  India  or  the  women  of  Russia  under 
Nicholas  II.  Of  course,  with  so  many  babies  in 
the  population  it  would  be  hard  to  keep  our  low 
death-rate.  Then,  too,  low  mortality  and  big 
families  simply  do  not  go  together.  Various 
studies  show  that  children  born  into  families  of 
more  than  nine  are  two  or  three  times  as  likely 
to  perish  in  their  infancy  as  those  born  into 
families  of  less  than  five.  Moreover,  many 
women  would  have  their  lives  cut  short  by  ex- 

26 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

cessive  child-bearing.  There  are  settlements  of 
the  foreign-born  in  our  Middle  West  in  which  the 
typical  woman  dies  trying  to  bring  into  the 
world  a  twelfth,  fifteenth,  or  twentieth  baby. 

Nevertheless,  imagine  that  with  the  aid  of  more 
skill  and  science  we  could  hold  our  death-rate 
down  to  thirteen  while  the  birth-rate  swelled  to 
forty-eight  per  thousand.  In  that  case  our 
country  at  the  end  of  this  century  would  have  a 
population  equal  to  that  of  the  entire  globe  at 
the  outbreak  of  the  World  War ! 

Let  us  venture  on  another  hypothesis.  More 
than  any  other  people  in  the  world  the  French 
Canadians  realize  what  we  are  authoritatively 
assured  is  the  Christian  ideal  in  this  matter  of  re- 
production. Nowhere  are  women  so  submissive 
to  the  admonitions  of  their  spiritual  director,  so 
resigned  to  the  burden  of  children  that  is  laid 
upon  them.  Hence  a  fecundity  in  certain  parts 
of  the  Province  of  Quebec  which  is  not  matched 
in  any  other  part  of  the  world  where  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  vital  statistics.  In  a  year  fifty- 
five  babies  are  born  per  thousand  of  population 
— nearly  two  and  a  lialf  times  as  many  as  in  our 
"registration  area." 

To  be  sure,  it  is  the  graveyard  rather  than  the 
27 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

nursery  that  is  populated  by  these  heroic  sacri- 
fices. Students  of  the  Loyola  School  of  Sociol- 
ogy and  Social  Service  in  Montreal  have  estab- 
lished that  a  baby  born  in  that  city  is  twice  as 
likely  to  die  in  infancy  as  a  Toronto  baby,  more 
than  twice  as  likely  to  die  as  a  New  York  baby, 
and  four  times  as  likely  not  to  survive  the  first 
year  as  a  baby  born  in  Brookline,  Massachusetts. 
This,  however,  has  really  nothing  to  do  with  the 
matter  of  fulfilling  one's  duty  in  respect  to  re- 
production. 

Now  if  our  people  came  to  be  as  docile  and 
devout  as  these  habitants  of  French  Canada, 
every  couple  willing  to  have  "as  many  children 
as  God  sends,"  why,  then  about  three  thousand  of 
those  born  among  us  this  year  would  as  octoge- 
narians see  our  country  peopled  by  three  billions 
of  human  beings ;  that  is,  by  thrice  the  population 
of  Asia  and  Africa  to-day  with  seventy  million 
folks  thrown  in  for  good  measure.  Of  course 
no  such  numbers  could  be  maintained  here,  but 
the  calculation  shows  what  we  let  ourselves  in 
for  if  we  take  the  Zaccahea  family  as  our  ideal. 

Suppose  that,  instead  of  looking  at  the  per- 
formance of  other  peoples,  we  should  go  to  our 

28 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

ancestors  for  a  standard.  We  do  not  know  the 
birth-rate  or  death-rate  of  our  great-grandpar- 
ents, bat  we  do  know  that  through  the  forty 
years  intervening  between  the  inauguration  of 
George  Washington  and  that  of  Andrew  Jack- 
son the  natural  growth  of  our  population  aver- 
aged 3  per  cent,  a  year.  Should  we  equal  their 
record  for  the  remainder  of  this  century  the 
American  people  would  then  be  two  thirds  as 
numerous  as  the  present  inhabitants  of  the 
globe! 


With  such  Matterhorns  of  prolificacy  in  full 
view,  how  mortifying  appears  the  actual  per- 
formance of  American  mothers  !  Even  with  the 
aid  of  millions  of  big-family  foreign-born  in  our 
midst,  their  fruitfulness  is  only  about  a  third 
of  that  of  the  French  Canadians  in  the  good  old 
days  and  a  mere  half  of  what  you  find  among 
the  Slavic  peoples.  Our  excess  of  births  over 
deaths  is  only  70  per  cent.  Our  natural  growth 
of  population  is  a  little  less  than  1  per  cent,  a 
year.  Keeping  this  up  for  seventy-eight  years 
and  ignoring  immigration,  we  should  come  to 
the  year  2000  A.  D.  with  only  222  millions  of 

29 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

population — a  sorry  showing  if  you  want  num- 
bers. 

It  is  evident  then  that  millions  upon  millions 
of  American  married  couples — perhaps  the 
majority  of  those  of  native  stock — are  in  some  de- 
gree slackers.  They  are  regulating  the  size  of 
their  families,  and  this  by  other  means  than 
marital  abstinence.  Nor  is  there  any  prospect 
that  the  situation  will  improve.  For  the  death- 
rate  of  our  people  will  be  brought  still  lower. 
In  twenty  years  the  experimenters,  the  doctors, 
the  public  health  agencies,  and  the  social  workers 
have  pulled  it  down  more  than  a  quarter.  Per- 
haps they  can  pare  it  down  another  quarter  in 
the  next  twenty  years.1  Why,  even  if  there  were 
no  fresh  conquests  of  disease,  the  mere  putting 
into  effect  everywhere  among  us  of  measures 
which  are  now  operating  with  success  somewhere 

l  In  a  recent  bulletin  Dr.  Louis  I.  Dublin,  statistician 
of  the  Metropolitan  Life  Insurance  Co.,  says:  "It  is  obvioua 
that  at  least  one-third  of  the  deaths  that  occur  each  year  may 
be  prevented  or  postponed.  In  some  communities,  the  pro- 
portion of  such  deaths  may  reach  even  one-half."  He  deems 
it  entirely  possible  to  extend  the  expectation  of  life  to 
sixty-five  years  by  putting  into  general  operation  the  forces 
which  in  localized  areas  have  so  definitely  demonstrated  their 
capacity  to  reduce  the  death  rate.  He  believes  that  the  year 
1930  will  see  a  large  part  of  this  addition  to  the  life  span 
actually  accomplished. 

30 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

would  reduce  our  death-rate  to  one  in  a  hundred 
each  year.2  So  one  need  not  strain  his  imagi- 
nation in  forecasting  an  annual  mortality  of  nine 
in  a  thousand,  or  even  eight.  But,  as  more  par- 
ents and  grandparents  round  out  their  lives  and 
death  is  well-nigh  banished  from  the  nursery, 
there  will  be  fewer  gaps  in  families  to  be  filled 
and  we  shall  see  the  annual  baby  crop  shrink 
to  nineteen  or  even  eighteen.  Even  then,  how- 
ever, our  population  will  be  growing  as  fast  as  it 
now  is  and  certainly  as  fast  as  it  is  possible  for 
it  to  grow  without  lowering  our  standard  of  liv- 
ing- 
There  is,  then,  ahead  of  us  an  endless  vista  of 
restriction  of  the  size  of  families.  We  shall 
leave  unused  an  increasing  portion  of  that  fer- 
tility which  became  established  in  our  species 
long  ago  in  order  to  meet  a  rate  of  wastage  which 
no  longer  presents  itself  in  civilized  life.  In 
China  about  all  of  human  natural  fertility  is 
needed  in  order  to  balance  deaths,  particularly 
the  excessive  mortality  of  infants.  In  southern 
and  eastern  Europe  about  half  of  this  fertility 
is  now  required  to  maintain  numbers;  in  cen- 

2  By  cutting  our  infant  mortality  rate  to  that  of  New  Zea- 
land three  and  a  half  years  could  be  added  to  the  life  ex- 
pectation of  the  American  people. 

31 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

tral  Europe  a  third ;  in  Scandinavia,  Great  Brit- 
ain, Australasia,  and  the  United  States  a  fourth 
or  less.  Some  of  us  will  live  to  a  time  when  a 
fifth  or  even  a  sixth  of  human  reproductive 
power  will  suffice  to  keep  up  our  population.  To 
be  sure,  after  several  decades  a  stationary  popu- 
lation would  include  such  heavy  contingents  of 
the  later  age-classes  that  the  annual  death-rate 
would  hover  in  the  neighborhood  of  fifteen,  and 
perhaps  30  per  cent,  of  human  fertility  would 
be  required  if  numbers  were  to  be  maintained. 
Even  then,  however,  the  calling  into  operation  of 
as  much  as  half  of  the  reproductive  power  of  our 
race  would  be  sheer  madness. 

Fewer  births  in  sympathy  with  fewer  deaths, 
in  order  that  human  increase  shall  not  outrun 
wealth  production,  signifies  that  a  new  thing  has 
come  into  the  life  of  mankind;  viz.,  a  fecundity 
that  adapts  itself  to  the  economic  prospect.  In 
view  of  their  miraculous  victories  over  disease, 
adaptive  fecundity  is,  indeed,  the  only  safeguard 
of  the  enlightened  peoples  against  the  dismal 
fate  of  overcrowded  China.  If  such  deliberate 
limitation  of  family  size  is  a  sin,  then  what  an 
appalling  prospect  of  Divine  displeasure  opens 
up !  For,  with  further  reductions  in  the  mortal- 

32 


AN  ADAPTIVE  FECUNDITY 

ity  rate,  an  increasing  proportion  of  American 
parents,  an  increasing  proportion  of  the  members 
of  the  white  race,  an  increasing  number  of  the 
peoples  of  the  globe  will  either  have  to  violate 
what  they  arc  assured  is  God's  law  or  else  mul- 
tiply until  it  will  be  necessary  to  hang  out  on 
our  planet  the  "Standing  Room  Only"  sign! 

§6 

If  we  have  no  cause  to  fear  lest  the  advanced 
peoples  grow  too  slowly  it  does  not  follow  that 
all  is  well.  Curtailment  of  fecundity  is  most 
practised  by  the  capable  and  ambitious  and 
least  by  the  inert  and  commonplace.  Hence 
the  people  grows  faster  at  the  bottom  than  at  the 
top.  While  the  general  American  birth-rate  is 
quite  reasonable  under  the  circumstances,  there 
ought  to  be  bigger  families  among  the  rising,  and 
smaller  families  among  the  stagnating;  more 
progeny  left  by  the  gifted,  and  fewer  by  the  dull ; 
less  prudence  in  the  good  homes,  and  less  reck- 
lessness in  the  hovels  and  tenements. 

But  that,  as  Kipling  would  say,  is  another 
story. 


33 


Ill 

FOLK   DEPLETION   AND   RURAL   DECLINE 


TN  September,  1911,  I  spent  a  fortnight  with  a 
friend  on  a  walking  trip  in  certain  parts  of 
New  England  in  order  to  get  terms  of  compar- 
ison for  certain  studies  I  was  making  of  the 
people  of  the  Middle  West.  The  counties  I  vis- 
ited were  chiefly  those  which  for  a  long  time 
have  been  losing  population  and  gaining  no  new 
industries.  I  talked  freely  with  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
secretaries,  school  principals  and  superintend- 
ents, clergymen,  physicians,  heads  of  State  insti- 
tutions, officials,  business  men,  and  other  intel- 
ligent citizens.  The  data  were  not  secured  for 
publication,  and  I  now  submit  them  only  in  the 
hope  that  they  may  throw  light  on  a  problem 
that  is  presenting  itself  in  those  parts  of  the 
East  and  Middle  West  which  have  contributed 
most  heavily  to  the  upbuilding  of  other  common- 
wealths. 

34 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

The  striking  thing  I  found  in  these  counties 
was  the  opinion  generally  held  by  thoughtful 
people  that  the  community  is  not  up  to  its  for- 
mer standard.  Whether  this  is  the  case  or  not, 
the  fact  that  those  in  the  best  position  to  know 
think  so  is  worthy  of  serious  attention. 

There  is  complaint  that  the  young  people  lack 
"ginger."  A  leader  in  boys'  work  said  that  his 
lads  cannot  be  persuaded  to  go  on  a  "hike"  to 
mountain  or  lake  on  Saturday  afternoon  in  order 
to  camp  there  overnight.  The  prospect  of  a 
nine-mile  walk  "scared  them  out."  Twenty 
might  promise,  but  scarcely  half  a  dozen  would 
show  up  at  the  rendezvous.  If  a  "rig"  were  pro- 
vided, all  were  glad  to  go.  The  boys  in  the  larger 
centers  were  said  to  be  more  active  in  disposition. 
In  the  small  villages  there  sometimes  is  no  re- 
sponse to  the  "Boy  Scout"  program.  A  hotel  pro- 
prietor noticed  that,  whereas  in  his  youth  every 
boy  had  some  work  to  do  and  did  it,  now  many 
boys  between  fifteen  and  eighteen  are  irrespon- 
sible and  worthless,  and  their  parents  support 
them  in  idleness.  The  more  spirited  and  ambi- 
tious boys  keep  going  away,  so  that  those  who 
remain  are  rather  apathetic.  He  remarked  that 
the  feeling  of  the  young  fellows  about  their  base- 

35 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

ball  games  with  other  towns  does  not  run  as  high 
as  it  did  in  his  boyhood.  Some  school  princi- 
pals observe  that  during  recess  their  pupils  are 
content  to  stand  about  and  talk,  chaff,  and  play 
tricks  on  one  another  instead  of  taking  part  in 
active  games.  In  high  school  the  boys  show 
very  little  interest  in  their  base-ball  team,  and 
when  a  match  game  with  another  school  comes 
off  not  more  than  half  of  the  boys  and  one  fifth 
of  the  girls  attend.  Few  will  pay  ten  cents  a 
month  to  support  their  athletic  league,  although 
they  spend  their  money  freely  enough  on  motion- 
picture  shows. 

In  a  river  community  in  which  motor-boating 
is  very  popular,  it  has  been  found  impossible  to 
interest  the  young  people  in  water  sports. 
Their  one  stimulus  to  sustained  physical  exer- 
tion is  dancing. 

A  certain  Y.  M.  C.  A.  secretary  said  that  the 
boys  he  works  among  display  normal  physical  en- 
ergy, but  that  the  young  men  over  eighteen  are 
noticeably  sluggish,  owing  to  the  fact  that  be- 
fore the  age  of  eighteen  most  of  the  more  ener- 
getic have  gone  away  to  the  cities.  There  was 
much  complaint  that  lads  quit  school  as  soon  as 

36 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

the  law  allows,  and  then,  in  spite  of  paren- 
tal entreaties,  loaf  about  town  and  go  to  the 
bad. 

§  2 

I  was  astonished  to  learn  that  quite  often  it 
is  necessary  to  show  the  school  children  how  to 
play.  School  men  hailing  from  other  States  were 
puzzled  by  this  strange  juvenile  apathy.  Left  to 
themselves,  the  children  stand  about,  scuffle,  or 
play  practical  jokes  on  one  another.  In  some 
cases,  when  shown  how  to  play  regular  games, 
they  respond  eagerly  and  idolize  the  teacher  who 
has  shown  them  how  to  play.  Clergymen  find 
if  they  can  get  a  group  of  boys  to  take  "hikes" 
in  summer,  skate  in  winter,  and  engage  in  regu- 
lar sports,  many  of  them  will  eventually  become 
interested  in  religion  and  education.  The  usual 
complaint  is  that  the  young  people  are  not 
interested  in  anything  worth  while,  but  that 
they  play  cards,  dance,  visit  motion-picture 
shows,  and  run  the  streets.  School  principals 
say  that  it  is  very  hard  to  get  work  out  of  pupils, 
that  they  have  to  amuse  the  pupils  in  order  to 
get  along  with  them.  From  their  elders  they 

37 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

inherit  the  tradition  that  the  school  is  a  place 
for  fun  and  that  the  teacher  is  their  natural 
enemy,  to  be  foiled  if  possible.  Among  the  pu- 
pils of  the  high  school  the  corporate  spirit  is 
said  to  be  weak.  The  singing  schools,  debating 
societies,  and  lyceums  which,  two  generations 
ago,  played  so  great  a  part  in  the  life  of  the 
rural  young  people  are  no  longer  heard  of.  The 
only  collective  recreation  the  young  people  or- 
ganize is  the  dance. 

There  is  general  complaint  that  the  rising  gen- 
eration is  frivolous,  and  indifferent  to  all  higher 
things.  "Not  a  particle  of  zeal  or  ambition 
among  the  young  people  either  in  village  or 
country  districts,"  says  a  county  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
secretary  of  wide  knowledge.  "Those  in  the 
church  won't  do  a  thing  for  its  institutional  life," 
says  a  clergyman.  "No  bottom;  nothing  to 
build  on,"  comments  a  religious  worker.  A 
professor  in  a  certain  college  had  been  struck 
by  the  absence  of  social  enthusiasms  among  the 
students.  In  the  entire  three  hundred  there 
was  not  one  to  whom  the  leadership  of  a  boy's 
club  could  be  entrusted.  Only  the  "sissy"  type 
of  young  man  offered  himself  for  social  service. 


38 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

§  3 

In  the  stagnating  counties  the  problem  of  the 
juvenile  presents  itself  in  the  acutest  form  in 
which  I  have  ever  known  it.  There  is  no  provi- 
sion for  the  recreative  life  of  young  people;  no 
playground,  meeting-place,  or  social  center. 

The  school  playground  is  merely  a  bare  area, 
the  churches  rarely  offer  anything  social  or  rec- 
reative, and  the  young  people  seem  to  have  lost 
the  power  to  use  the  school-house  in  the  old 
ways.  Said  a  town  official  to  me,  "One  of  the 
greatest  problems  before  the  American  people  to- 
day is  what  to  do  with  the  young  people  in  the 
evening."  He  did  not  know  that  in  many  local- 
ities the  problem  has  been  met  and  solved. 
"Hanging  about  the  streets"  is  rife  and  "haunt- 
ing the  pool-rooms"  is  growing.  Cigarette  smok- 
ing is  general  among  the  boys  and  meets  with 
little  or  no  parental  opposition.  Sex  conscious- 
ness arrives  early  and,  in  the  absence  of  compet- 
ing interests,  the  effects  are  alarming. 

As  regards  the  relations  between  boys  and 
girls,  it  would  be  idle  for  me  to  present  here 
such  statements  as  were  given  to  me,  for  they 
would  be  received  with  a  shout  of  incredulity. 
However,  they  are  not  in  the  least  abnormal  or 

39 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

against  nature.  They  are  precisely  what  may 
be  expected  under  the  three  conditions  of  lack  of 
wholesome  and  innocent  recreation,  absence  of 
religious  influences,  and  want  of  parental  su- 
pervision. 

"Talk  about  the  purity  of  the  open  country !" 
said  one.  "The  moral  conditions  among  our 
country  boys  and  girls  are  worse  than  in  the 
lowest  tenement-house  in  New  York.  In  the 
cities  the  youth  has  interests,  something  to  take 
his  mind  off  his  instincts.  Here  life  in  the  iso- 
lated farm-houses  during  the  winter  is  likely  to 
be  lonely  and  dreary  for  young  people.  Nobody 
to  see,  nobody  going  by.  What  is  more  natural 
than  that  the  boys  should  get  together  in  the  barn 
and  while  away  the  long  winter  evenings  talking 
obscenity,  telling  filthy  stories,  recounting  sex 
exploits,  encouraging  one  another  in  vileness, 
perhaps  indulging  in  unnatural  practices?"  The 
head  of  a  State  institution  said  that  his  most  sod- 
den and  hopeless  cases  of  moral  deterioration 
came  from  isolated  homes  among  the  hills.  He 
believes  that  75  per  cent,  of  the  bad  boys  and 
girls  who  are  not  mentally  deficient  could  have 
been  saved  if  they  had  been  provided  with  proper 
play  and  recreation. 

40 


Lament  over  the  inattention  or  indifference  of 
parents  to  the  morals  of  their  children  was  uni 
versal  among  those  I  met.  A  State  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
officer  said  to  me  that  among  the  hundreds  of 
boys  in  his  boys'  clubs  he  had  found  but  two  who 
had  been  instructed  by  their  parents  in  matters 
of  sex.  In  some  parts  most  parents  give  their 
daughters  no  instruction  in  sex,  with  the  result 
that  the  girls  may  go  wrong  without  the  slight- 
est knowledge  of  the  possible  consequences.  It 
is  said  that  parents  don't  pretend  to  know  wrhere 
their  sons  and  daughters  are  in  the  evenings 
and  don't  care.  They  are  ignorant  of  the  evil 
effects  of  premature  sex  life,  and  have  no  concern 
about  the  conduct  of  their  young  people. 

The  want  of  public  spirit  and  the  absorption 
of  well-to-do  people  in  their  private  pursuits 
and  pleasures  is  said  to  be  very  marked.  In  one 
town  a  responsible  man  declared  that  "eight 
out  of  ten  business  men  here  contribute  nothing 
to  the  leadership  of  the  social  life  of  the  com- 
munity. Their  wives  play  bridge,  entertain 
one  another,  tipple  on  the  sly,  and  in  some  cases 
do  worse.  Their  interest  in  home,  or  church,  or 
school  is  very  slight."  In  another  town  I  was 

41 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

told  that  men  who  are  prominent  or  in  a  posi- 
tion to  exert  an  uplift  influence  refuse  to  take 
a  moral  stand  on  any  matter  for  fear  of  losing 
their  customers  or  clients,  hurting  their  business 
relations,  or  raising  their  taxes. 

§  5 

The  clergymen  are  often  alive  to  the  situation 
and  wish  to  socialize  the  work  of  the  church 
so  as  to  make  it  a  positive  influence  in  the  lives 
of  the  young  people,  but  their  deacons  and  trus- 
tees will  not  allow  the  building  to  be  used  for 
anything  but  worship.  As  a  consequence  the 
church  is  declining  in  attendance  and  support 
and  in  some  communities  has  come  to  be  a  neg- 
ligible factor.  I  was  told  that  in  the  open 
country  people  never  think  of  going  to  church, 
and  many  youths  have  never  seen  the  inside  of 
a  sacred  edifice.  Earnest  men  in  the  pulpit  and 
out  of  it  complain  that  the  church  does  not  make 
itself  felt  on  moral  issues  such  as  gaming,  di- 
vorce, and  juvenile  vice.  They  lament  that  it  is 
not  conscious  of  a  mission  to  the  community. 
Many  of  the  younger  clergymen  have  a  social 
message,  but  under  the  circumstances  they  are 
quite  powerless.  Said  one  clergyman:  "The 

42 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

stubborn  individualism  of  the  old  deacons  and 
elders  is  breaking  the  hearts  of  the  earnest  pas- 
tors up  here.  The  conservative  members  are 
killing  the  church." 

§  6 

Some  of  my  informants  offered  no  explanation 
of  these  bad  tendencies.  Some  look  upon  them 
as  the  trend  of  the  age,  and  imagine  that  the 
whole  American  people  is  going  to  the  dogs. 
Others  think  that  people  about  them  have  de- 
generated. The  explanation  which  occurred  to 
me,  because  the  phenomena  I  observed  do  not  dif- 
fer essentially  from  what  may  be  observed  in 
certain  rural  parts  of  a  dozen  older  States,  I 
laid  before  at  least  a  score  of  intelligent  persons, 
and  not  one  disputed  its  plausibility. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  root  of  the  trouble  is 
not  folk  degeneration  but  folk  depletion.  Cer- 
tain of  the  counties  visited  had  more  rural  pop- 
ulation eighty  years  ago  than  they  have  to-day. 
For  three,  even  four  generations  the  hemor- 
rhage has  been  going  on.  If  the  emigration  to 
the  cities  and  to  the  West  had"  carried  away  just 
average  persons,  it  could  not  affect  the  char- 
acteristics of  the  people;  but  if  those  who  left 

43 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

were  unusual  in  respect  to  some  native  quality, 
then  their  leaving  would  impoverish  the  people 
in  respect  to  this  quality. 

Perhaps  the  trait  most  distinctive  of  those 
who  cut  their  moorings  in  order  to  follow  the 
call  of  distant  opportunity  is  the  spirit  of  initia- 
tive. They  have  it  in  them  to  make  a  start,  in 
spite  of  home  ties,  the  bonds  of  habit,  and  the 
restraints  of  prudence.  Had  they  not  emi- 
grated', their  spirit  of  initiative  would  have 
shown  itself  along  other  lines.  They  would 
have  been  among  the  first  in  the  community  to 
change  their  method  of  farming,  to  introduce 
some  new  crop,  to  embark  in  an  untried  in- 
dustry, or  to  promote  some  community  enter- 
prise. A  heavy  outflow  of  this  element  need  not 
leave  the  community  poorer  in  physique,  or 
brains,  or  character,  but  it  does  leave  it  poorer 
in  natural  leaders. 

This  is  serious  because  natural  leaders  are 
of  the  utmost  value  to  society.  Not  only  is  it 
they  who  launch  improvements,  but  they  per- 
form a  peculiar  service  in  keeping  up  to  the 
mark  the  various  institutions  which  minister  to 
the  higher  life  of  the  community.  The  bulk  of 
the  people  are  unable  to  start  or  direct  those 

44 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

institutions,  although  they  appreciate  and  sup- 
port them  when  once  they  exist.  Often  have  I 
seen  a  depressing  slump  in  the  religious,  so- 
cial, and  recreative  life  of  a  neighborhood,  fol- 
lowing the  moving  away  of  two  or  three  fami- 
lies of  initiative.  Usually  those  who  insist  upon 
and  know  how  to  get  good  schools,  vigorous 
churches,  and  abundant  means  for  social  enjoy- 
ment, are  a  minority,  often  a  very  small  minor- 
ity. My  own  observation  is  that  frequently  the 
loss  of  even  the  best  tenth  will  cut  down  by  50 
per  cent,  the  effective  support  the  community 
gives  to  higher  interests. 

The  continual  departure  of  young  people 
who  would  in  time  have  become  leaders  results 
eventually  in  a  visible  moral  decline  of  the  com- 
munity. The  roads  are  neglected,  which  means 
less  social  intercourse  and  a  smaller  turnout  to 
school  and  church  and  public  events.  School 
buildings  and  grounds  deteriorate,  and  the  false 
idea  takes  root  that  it  pays  to  hire  the  cheaper 
teacher.  The  church  gets  into  a  rut,  fails  to 
start  up  the  social  and  recreative  activities 
which  bind  the  young  people  to  it,  and  presently 
ceases  to  be  a  force.  Frivolity  engrosses  the 
young  because  no  one  organizes  singing  schools, 

45 


THE  SOCIAL1  TREND 

literary  societies,  or  debating  clubs.  Presently 
a  generation  has  grown  up  that  has  missed  the 
uplifting  and  refining  influence  of  these  com- 
munal institutions.  There  is  a  marked  decline 
V  in  standards  of  individual  and  family  morality. 
Many  couples  become  too  self-centered  to  be 
willing  to  rear  children.  It  is  observed  that 
people  are  no*t  up  to  the  level  of  their  fore- 
father's, that  they  are  coarser  in  their  tastes  and 
care  less  for  higher  things.  Vice  and  sensuality 
are  not  so  restrained  as  of  yore.  The  false  opin- 
ion goes  abroad  that  the  community  is  "degen- 
erate" and  therefore  past  redemption. 

All  this  may  result  from  the  continual  ab- 
straction from  a  normal  population  of  too  many 
of  that  handful  of  born  leaders  which  is  needed 
to  leaven  the  social  lump. 

Let  no  one  imagine  that  the  symptoms  of  folk 
depletion  are  confined  to  the  stagnating  coun- 
ties of  New  England.  This  phenomenon  has  a 
wider  range  than  most  people  suspect.  The  dis- 
franchisement  of  seventeen  hundred  citizens  of 
an  Ohio  rural  county  for  selling  their  votes  lets 
in  a  ray  on  the  dry  rot  of  spots  that  have  missed 
the  electrifying  touch  of  railroad  or  city.  The 
knots  of  gaping  tobacco-chewing  loafers  that 

46 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

haunt  the  station  platform  in  some  parts  of  the 
Middle  West  prove  that  the  natural  peacemakers 
of  that  locality  have  gone  to  create  prosperity 
elsewhere.  In  parts  of  southern  Michigan,  Illi- 
nois, Wisconsin,  and  even  as  far  west  as  Missouri 
there  are  communities  which  remind  one  of 
fished-out  ponds  populated  chiefly  by  bullheads 
and  suckers.  I  have  not  come  upon  the  phenom- 
enon, however,  in  Minnesota,  Iowa,  or  the  States 
farther  west. 

On  the  basis  of  wide  studies,  Dr.  Warren  H. 
Wilson,  head  of  the  church  and  country  life  de- 
partment of  the  Presbyterian  Board  of  Home 
Missions,  declared  in  1909 : 

Allowing  for  some  exceptions,  not  too  numerous,  it 
may  be  said  that  throughout  the  prosperous  and  pro- 
ductive farming  regions  of  the  United  States,  which 
have  been  settled  for  fifty  years,  community  life  has 
disappeared.  There  is  no  play  for  the  children;  there 
is  no  recreation  for  young  people;  there  are  no  ade- 
quate opportunities  for  acquaintance  and  marriage  for 
young  men  and  women;  there  is  not  a  sufficient  edu- 
cational system  for  the  needs  of  country  people;  and 
there  is  not  for  the  average  man  or  woman  born  in  the 
country  an  economic  opportunity  within  reach  of  his 
birthplace,  such  as  will  satisfy  even  modest  desires. 
There  is  not  in  a  weak  community  that  satisfaction  of 

47 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

social  instinct  which  makes  it  "a  good  place  to  live  in." 
Time  was  in  New  England  and  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania  when  there  was  a  comm/unity  to  which 
every  farmer  belonged  with  some  pleasure  and  pride. 
The  absence  of  community  life  throughout  these 
country  regions  expresses  to-day  what  one  man  calls 
"the  intolerable  condition  of  country  life/' 1 

If  this  widespread  moral  sag  betokened  a  de- 
generation of  the  people,  what  an  appalling  pros- 
pect would  lie  before  us!  But,  as  I  see  it,  only 
rarely  is  degeneration  present.  The  bulk  of  the 
people  in  these  rural  counties  are  essentially  like 
the  bulk  of  Americans  of  the  same  stock  in  any 
other  part  of  the  country.  They  are  normal,  not 
subnormal.  Their  engrossment  in  business  and 
pleasure,  their  indifference  to  cultural  and 
spiritual  interests,  their  lack  of  public  spirit, 
are  precisely  what  you  would  find  in  most  other 
communities  but  for  the  presence  of  a  certain 
small  minority  who  set  strict  standards  of  pri- 
vate conduct,  family  life,  and  child  up-bringing, 
and  persuade  the  majority  that  looser  standards 
and  practices  are  "low."  It  is  these  who  take 
the  lead  in  communal  undertakings,  better 

i  "Publication  of  the  American  Sociological  Society";  Vol. 
V,  p.  174. 

48 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

roads,  schools,  churches,  and  organized  school 
life.  The  children  of  the  rest  are  enlightened 
and  refined  by  the  influences  radiating  from 
such  agencies,  and  thus  the  moral  plane  of  the 
community  rises  from  generation  to  generation. 
No  doubt  community  decline  from  folk  de- 
pletion has  been  occurring  sporadically  for 
thousands  of  years.  If  it  has  remained  for  our 
time  to  diagnose  the  disease  and  its  cause,  it  is 
because  the  double  attraction  of  city  and  fron- 
tier, coupled  with  the  influence  of  schools  and 
newspapers,  has  depleted  our  old  rural  communi- 
ties with  an  unprecedented  rapidity.  But  there 
are  indications  that  ours  is  not  the  only  country 
affected  with  the  malady.  From  England,  Italy, 
and  Scandinavia  come  tales  of  rural  populations 
retrograding,  owing  to  the  loss  of  their  am- 
bitious units  by  emigration. 

§97 
t 

The  question  of  remedies  for  folk  depletion 
brings  up  nearly  the  whole  problem  of  the  ameli- 
oration of  country  life,  and  the  lines  of  proce- 
dure can  be  only  briefly  indicated. 

1.  The  more  ambitious  young  people  migrate 
because  they  imagine  larger  opportunities  of 

49 


individual  success  and  social  usefulness  else- 
where. The  only  way  to  retain  this  precious 
leaven  is  to  show  them  satisfying  opportunities 
at  home.  Either  new  industries  should  be  in- 
troduced, or  else  they  should  be  led  to  perceive 
new  possibilities  in  old  industries.  Here  is  the 
rdle  for  a  strong  State  agricultural  college  and 
experiment  station. 

2.  By  traveling  exhibits,  local  demonstration 
farms,   or  a   State  farmers'   adviser  in   every 
county,  the  State  should  provide  the  eager  and 
capable  young  people  with  good  reasons  for  stay- 
ing on  the  farm.     By  serving  as  object-lessons 
to  their  less  progressive  neighbors,  their  suc- 
cess in  improved  agriculture  and  in  horticul- 
ture will  eventually  lift  the  economic  plane  of 
the  whole  community. 

3.  The  rural  pastor  should  be  specially  trained 
for  his  job,  and  the  ministry  of  a  rural  church 
should  be  looked  upon  as  an  honorable  life  ca- 
reer. 

4.  The   standard  of  local  public   education 
ought  to  be  determined  less  by  the  will  of  the 
people  of  the  locality  and  more  by  the  fixed  pur- 
pose of  the  people  of  the  whole  State. 

5.  The  recreative,  social,  and  civic  services  of 

50 


FOLK  DEPLETION 

the  school  ought  to  be  made  equal  in  importance 
to  the  giving  of  instruction  to  boys  and  girls. 

6.  The  pay,  emoluments,  and  dignity  of  the 
teaching  profession  ought  to  be  such  as  to  attract 
into  it  ambitious,  positive,  and  dominant  indi- 
viduals who,  in  whatever  community  they  may 
teach,  will  of  themselves  take  the  lead  in  stimu- 
lating higher  interests  and  inducing  others  to 
aid  in  supporting  these  interests. 

7.  Better  school  buildings,  grounds,  and  equip- 
ment, by  the  aid  they  can  lend  in  the  economic 
and  moral  rehabilition  of  the  community,  would 
prove  to  be,  not  an  extravagance,  but  a  profit- 
able investment. 

8.  At  present  the  subject-matter  of  instruction 
in  rural  schools  directs  the  thoughts  and  longing 
of  the  pupils  toward  the  cities.     The  curricu- 
lum ought  to  be  so  modified  as  to  make  life  in 
the  country  hold  out  to  them  more  of  interest 
and  promise. 

9.  Organization   of  farmers   should   be   pro- 
moted, not  only  for  the  improvement  of  their 
material  conditions,  but  also  to  provide  oppor- 
tunities for  social  enjoyment  and  to  give  a  lever- 
age for  natural  leaders  among  them. 


51 


IV 

DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 


ft!  HE  public  thinks  that  a  great  social  change 
-••  can  hinge  only  on  some  great  event;  a  bat- 
tle, treaty,  law,  or  party  struggle.  The  sociolo- 
gist, however,  knows  that  among  the  greatest 
happenings  are  things  which  do  not  occur  at  any 
particular  time  or  place.  The  Social  current  may 
be  bent  most  by  things  which  never  get  into  the 
despatches  at  all.  About  twenty-five  years  ago 
American  society  turned  the  sharpest  corner  it 
has  turned  since  the  abolition  of  slavery;  and 
yet  the  public  noticed  nothing  then,  nor  even 
now  does  it  generally  realize  what  happened. 

Throughout  its  history  the  American  people 
have  developed  in  the  presence  of  abundant 
land.  Always  there  was  good  land  to  be  had  for 
little  or  nothing  if  only  you  would  take  the 
trouble  to  go  West.  Wherever  it  might  be — on 
the  Great  Kanawha  or  on  the  Columbia, — the 

52 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

frontier  spelt  opportunity  for  the  common  man. 
Neither  fever  and  ague  nor  scalping  savage 
could  check  the  westward  stream  of  land-seekers 
hoping  to  get  their  feet  on  the  first  rung  of  the 
ladder.  The  passion  for  economic  independence 
was  so  intense  that,  by  the  time  a  region  had 
been  sparsely  occupied,  it  would  be  contributing 
to  the  tide  moving  on  to  settle  the  frontier  be- 
yond. It  is  a  fact  that  each  tier  of  Western 
States  was  settled  principally  by  overflow  from 
the  States  nearest  to  it.  The  Ohio  Valley 
furnished  the  people  who  settled  along  the 
Upper  Mississippi,  and  their  children  in  turn 
played  the  major  role  in  peopling  the  trans- 
Missouri  region. 

The  westward  movement  was  a  response  to  the 
lure  of  opportunity  rather  than  to  the  lash  of 
need.  This  is  shown  by  the  way  in  which  the 
rate  of  expansion  kept  pace  with  the  growing 
liberality  of  the  Government  to  the  settler.  The 
more  nearly  the  public  domain  was  offered  as 
free  land,  the  more  eager  was  the  rush  to  the 
frontier.  Settlement  spread  from  the  Alle- 
ghanies  to  the  Mississippi  much  more  slowly  than 
from  the  Mississippi  to  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
Through  the  nineteenth  century  the  rate  of 

53 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

westward  march  of  the  frontier  was  continually 
accelerated,  so  that  it  was  never  moving  so  fast 
as  it  was  in  the  last  two  decades  before  it  ended. 
But,  more  than  two  decades  ago,  the  frontier  as 
a  large  determining  factor  in  the  life  of  the 
American  people  ceased  to  exist.  To  be  sure, 
the  first  grapple  with  rude  nature  is  still  to  be 
witnessed  in  some  parts.  In  Idaho  I  have  seen 
pioneers  literally  hewing  their  farms  out  of  the 
white  pine  forests  and  growing  grain  amid  the 
stumps,  just  as  a  hundred  years  ago  pioneers 
were  doing  amid  the  hard  woods  of  Indiana. 
The  few  remaining  parcels  of  virgin  land  can 
have,  however,  no  such  significance  for  our 
people  as  did  the  frontier  when  it  was  a  broad, 
irregular  belt  stretching  unbroken  from  the 
northern  to  the  southern  boundary  of  the 
country,  in  which  were  created  nearly  every  year 
some  tens  of  thousands  of  new  homes.  There 
is  still  public  land  of  a  sort  to  be  had,  but, 
as  a  great  shaping  condition,  the  frontier  has 
disappeared  and  with  it  has  ended  the  expansive 
free-land  epoch  that  constituted  our  national 
childhood.  Without  wishing  it,  yet  with  nobody 
to  blame,  we  have  entered  upon  the  era  of  lim- 
ited natural  resources,  and  intensive  utilization. 

54 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

The  change  is  almost  as  sharp  as  the  youth 
experiences  when  he  ceases  to  receive  aid  from 
home  and  for  the  first  time  is  thrown  upon  his 
own  resources. 

There  is,  to  be  sure,  in  the  Far  West,  much 
waste  which  will  in  time  be  brought  under  culti- 
vation ;  but  dry  land  that  costs  $30  to  $50  an  acre 
to  get  water  to  is  not  an  opportunity  for  penni- 
less families  such  as  used  to  move  out  upon  the 
public  domain  and  forthwith  achieve  financial 
independence.  When  I  was  a  boy  in  Iowa  the 
farmer's  son  on  the  twenty-first  birthday  was  pre- 
sented by  his  father  with  a  team,  a  wagon,  and 
perhaps  a  few  farm  implements.  After  working 
a  year  for  wages,  he  married  the  girl  of  his  heart, 
put  bows  and  canvas  on  his  wagon,  and  drove 
out  to  the  margin  of  settlement  in  Kansas,  Ne- 
braska, or  the  Dakotas.  Before  he  reached  his 
twenty-third  birthday  he  was  an  independent 
farmer  on  a  quarter-section  of  virgin  land,  which 
would  certainly  gain  from  five  to  ten  thousand 
dollars  in  value  by  the  time  he  was  old.  Now 
the  young  man  must  needs  work  on  wages  or 
as  renter  for  fifteen  or  perhaps  twenty  years  be- 
fore he  can  "get  ahead"  enough  to  have  a  farm 
of  his  own.  And  he  will  be  thirty-five  or  forty 

55 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

years  of  age  before  lie  is  where  the  other  man 
was  at  twenty-three  years  of  age. 

So  long  as  the  fertile  prairie  beckoned  him, 
the  discontented  American  in  the  older  States 
enjoyed  an  option — to  move  up  or  to  move  on. 
Now  there  is  little  for  him  to  gain  by  moving 
on,  and,  since  "Room  at  the  top!"  is  the  gospel 
for  the  exceptional  man,  it  is  hard  to  escape  the 
conclusion  that  for  the  commonplace  man  the 
circle  of  opportunities  has  become  relatively 
narrower.  The  superior  man,  however, — su- 
perior in  ability,  in  education,  in  resources,  or 
in  connections — finding  in  the  ceaseless  progress 
of  organization  in  our  society  a  widening  scope 
for  the  exercise  of  his  superiority,  more  and 
more  easily  raises  himself  above  the  mass. 

Since  industrialism  is,  as  it  were,  a  wide-an- 
gled prism  which  refracts  population  more  than 
does  simple  farming,  it  is  likely  that  in  days  to 
come  the  social  spectrum  in  America  will  be 
lengthened. 

The  slackening  of  expansion  in  the  nineties 
was  almost  dramatic  in  its  suddenness.  In  the 
five  years  ending  1884  the  average  annual  en- 
largement of  our  food-bearing  area  was  near 
7,000,000  acres.  In  the  five  years  following  it 

56 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

was  less  than  3,000,000  acres.  In  the  succeed- 
ing ten  years,  1889-99,  it  was  800,000  acres 
and  would  have  been  a  minus  quantity  had  not 
millions  of  acres  of  meadow  lands  been  plowed 
up.  Between  1860  and  1890  the  median  point 
of  cereal  production  moved  west  about  120  miles 
a  decade,  whereas  during  the  nineties  it  migrated 
only  twenty-five  miles.  During  the  seventies  the 
median  point  of  improved  farm  acreage  moved 
west  131  miles,  during  the  eighties  107  miles,  dur- 
ing the  nineties  only  fifty-seven  miles.  During 
the  nineties  the  center  of  population  shifted  west 
only  fourteen  miles,  as  against  forty-eight  miles 
in  the  eighties,  fifty-eight  in  the  seventies,  and  an 
average  of  fifty  miles  a  decade  during  the  first 
century  of  the  republic. 

How  land  values  shot  up  as  soon  as  the  ex- 
tension of  the  crop-bearing  area  slackened  is 
clearly  seen  from  the  following  census  figures: 

1870-80     1880-90     1890-1900     1900-10 
Per  cent,  increase  in 
number  of  farms  50  14  26         11 

Per  cent,  increase  in 

farm  acreage  31.5        16.3        35          5 

Per  cent,  increase  in 
improved  farm 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

1870-80  1880-90  1890-1900  1900-10 
acreage  50        25.6  16  15.4 

Per  cent,  increase  in 

value  of  farm 

property  36         32  27          100.5 

Per  cent,  increase  in 

value  of  farm  land        37         30  26          118 

Think  of  the  aggregate  farm  land  of  the 
United  States  gaining  118  per  cent,  in  value  in 
a  single  decade! 


Had  we  been  an  ignorant  peasant  people  the 
sudden  ending  of  arable  public  land  in  the  rain- 
belt  would  have  brought  us  up  sharply  as  if  we 
had  met  a  stone  wall,  and  the  blow  to  popular 
hopes  and  ideals  would  have  been  tragic.  But, 
being  ingenious  and  enterprising,  our  people, 
finding  themselves  unexpecetdly  at  the  end  of 
the  sunset  path,  at  once  pushed  out  laterally  in 
quest  of  new  margins  and  found  various  buffers 
to  ease  the  shock.  Means  were  found  to  make  the 
country  stretch  to  fit  its  growing  population. 
The  numerous  New  England  "abandoned  farms," 
which  startled  the  public  during  the  latter  part 
of  the  eighties,  were  quietly  reoccupied,  and 

58 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

many  stretches  of  poor  or  heavy  soil  which  the 
land-seeker  had  contemptuously  passed  by  in  the 
old  days  began  to  be  turned  to  account.  In  the 
Middle  West  millions  of  acres  of  swamp  and 
overflowed  lands  were  diked  and  drained  while  a 
great  cry  went  up  that  the  Western  rivers  should 
be  caught  and  turned  upon  the  desert.  Since 
reclamation  could  best  be  financed  and  directed 
from  Washington,  there  was  a  rapid  growth  of 
the  functions  of  the  Federal  Government  in  re- 
lation to  the  settlement  of  the  remaining  public 
domain. 

The  enthusiastic  popular  response  to  the  idea 
of  conserving  our  natural  resources  was  another 
evidence  that  we  were  on  a  new  tack.  For 
twenty  or  even  thirty  years  before  President 
Roosevelt  in  1906  united  a  number  of  kindred 
policies  and  launched  them  under  the  name  of 
"conservation,"  certain  government  scientific 
bureaus  as  well  as  certain  university  geologists 
and  economists  had  been  denouncing  our  waste 
of  Nature's  stored  wealth  and  prophesying  of  the 
dearth  to  come.  The  people  paid  little  heed  to 
such  warnings  until  it  had  been  borne  in  upon 
them  that  the  agricultural  frontier  was  gone  for- 
ever. WTithin  about  ten  years  after  the  event  it- 

59 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

self,  the  public  mind  was  ripe  for  the  conserva- 
tion idea. 

The  same  state  of  mind  lies  behind  the  enor- 
mous expansion  in  the  activities  of  the  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture.  A  few  inches  below  the 
surface  of  the  American  farm  lies  a  second  farm 
that  is  rarely  tilled.  Shallow  plowing  and 
scanty  cultivation  may  do  when  a  man  is  spread- 
ing himself  out  thin-  over  a  quarter-section ;  but 
when  the  farmer  has  to  provide  farms  for  his 
two  boys  out  of  that  same  quarter-section,  he  is 
glad  to  be  shown  how  to  get  more  from  the  soil. 
So  long  as  there  was  a  West  to  send  boys  to, 
he  was  content  with  the  old  simple  tillage.  I 
can  remember  how  the  Iowa  farmers  used  to 
jeer  at  the  professors  in  the  State  college  of 
agriculture!  "Them  fellers  with  their  book 
learnin'  can't  teach  me  nothin',"  was  how  many 
a  granger  put  it.  Now  the  farmers  themselves 
sit  meekly  at  the  feet  of  experts  who  explain  to 
them  seed-selection  and  scientific  tillage,  while 
the  agricultural  colleges  are  visited  by  hosts  of 
young  men  keen  to  learn  how  to  make  farming 
pay. 

The  "back-to-the-land"  agitation  is  the  after- 
math of  the  disappearance  of  the  frontier.  So 

60 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

long  as  we  were  spreading  over  the  boundless 
wilderness  there  was  little  chance  to  make  money 
in  agriculture.  The  Homestead  Law,  by  which 
any  one  who  would  go  to  cultivating  wild  land 
got  a  farm  as  a  gift,  operated  as  a  bounty  on 
agriculture,  and,  of  course,  caused  it  to  be  over- 
done. No  matter  how  ruinously  low  the  price 
of  farm  produce  sank,  the  plow  went  right  on 
with  its  conquests,  for  the  settler  looked  for  his 
reward  in  the  increase  in  the  value  of  his  home- 
stead rather  than  in  the  proceeds  from  the  sale 
of  his  crops.  Continually  fine  old  farms  from 
Massachusetts  to  Indiana  lost  value  because  of 
the  disastrous  cheapening  of  their  produce  ow- 
ing to  the  stimulated  extension  of  grain-grow- 
ing in  the  West. 

Once  the  process  had  ended,  the  price  of  pro- 
duce rose,  and  at  last  there  was  a  chance  to  make 
a  good  living  by  putting  brains,  training,  and 
money  into  farming  instead  of  merely  hard  work. 
The  back-to-the-land  gospel  is  a  recognition  of 
the  fact  that  to-day  the  young  fellow  who  quits 
the  farm  for  good  may  be  turning  his  back  on 
a  better  opportunity  than  he  will  ever  find  in  the 
glittering  city  which  beckons  him. 

Since  reclamation  and  better  farming  fell  far 
61 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

short  of  making  the  soil  stretch  to  our  need, 
there  began  an  exodus  of  Americans  seeking  in 
the  Canadian  Northwest  that  cheap  land  which 
was  no  longer  to  be  had  here.  In  the  first  dec- 
ade of  this  century,  we  lost  half  a  million  to 
Canada,  for  the  most  part  not  jobless  men  seek- 
ing wages  but  farmers  of  the  Middle  West  who 
had  sold  their  holdings  for  from  f 80  to  $125  an 
acre  in  order  to  obtain  Saskatchewan  land  for 
their  sons  at  $20  an  acre.  For  the  first  time  in 
our  history  Americans  in  large  numbers  have 
bidden  good-by  forever  to  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
because  they  no  longer  wave  over  free  land. 

But  the  margins  taken  together  failed  to  re- 
tain for  agriculture  its  old  preeminence.  Be- 
fore 1900  we  exported  a  third  of  our  wheat  crop : 
a  decade  later  the  proportion  was  about  an 
eighth.  America,  which  a  generation  ago  was 
chief  purveyor  of  fresh  beef  to  the  United  King- 
dom, began  in  1914  to  import  ship-loads  of 
chilled  meat  from  Argentina.  Meanwhile  the 
swing  of  our  people  over  into  manufacturing — 
a  shift  greatly  accelerated  by  a  huge  immigra- 
tion— has  quite  reversed  our  rating  of  foreign 
markets.  Thirty  years  ago  we  were  intent  on 
feeding  Europeans  and  worried  lest  Germany 

62 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

should  exclude  our  pork.  Now  our  interest  is 
in  the  countries  about  the  Pacific  which  may 
be  induced  to  absorb  our  exports  of  manufac- 
tures. We  are  solicitous  about  the  maintenance 
of  the  "open  door"  in  the  Orient  and  keen  on 
breaking  into  South  American  trade. 


So  long  as  there  was  a  vacant  Great  West, 
it  was  rational  to  welcome  the  immigrant  who 
would  plant  himself  in  the  wilderness.  Why 
should  empty  stretches  which  aliens'  would  make 
blossom  with  the  homes  of  men  be  reserved  for 
coyote,  prairie-dog,  and  rattlesnake? 

But  the  immigrants  of  the  last  twenty-five 
years  have  generally  failed  to  find  a  footing 
on  the  soil.  In  1910  there  was  one  Scandina- 
vian farmer  for  every  eight  persons  of  Scandina- 
vian birth  in  this  country  and  one  German 
farmer  for  every  eleven  persons  of  German  birth ; 
but  it  took  130  Poles,  Hungarians,  or  Italians 
among  us  to  furnish  one  farmer.  Unable  to  en- 
gage in  food-growing,  most  of  the  immigrants 
have  had  to  press  into  the  labor  market,  compete 
for  jobs  with  those  already  here,  and  thereby  cre- 
ate a  sense  of  pressure  which  nourishes  a  rising 

63 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

demand  for  the  restriction*  of  foreign  immigra- 
tion. It  is  safe  to  predict  that  the  cheerful  come- 
on-boys-there's-room-for-all  attitude  toward  the 
congested  peoples  of  the  world  will  never  again 
prevail  in  this  country.  We  have  paid  a  high 
tuition  to  learn  the  lesson  which  we  might  have 
had  for  nothing  by  studying  the  pages  of  Mal- 
thus  and  his  successors. 


During  the  first  decade  of  this  century,  while 
our  population  grew  21  per  cent.,  the  volume 
of  the  ten  principal  crops  of  the  country  in- 
creased only  9  per  cent.  No  wonder  the  people 
feel  themselves  between  the  jaws  of  high  cost  of 
living,  and  look  angrily  about  for  some  one  to 
blame!  During  the  eighteen  years  after  1896 
the  retail  cost  to  Americans  of  their  fifteen  prin- 
cipal articles  of  food  rose  more  than  70  per  cent. 
Athough  this  reflects  a  general  upward  move- 
ment due  to  the  increasing  plentifulness  of  gold, 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  despite  the  gain  of  labor 
in  productiveness  during  this  period,  there  was 
actually  a  fall  in  real  wages.  The  chief  causes 
of  this  sinister  phenomenon  have  been  the  ex- 
haustion of  our  supply  of  virgin  arable  land 

64 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

and  an  unprecedented  volume  of  immigration. 
Every  political  leader  offers  his  own  explanation 
of  the  rise  in  the  cost  of  living,  and  his  own 
remedy.  Few  perceive  that  the  old  low  level 
of  food  prices  can  be  restored  only  by  restoring 
to  us  a  public  domain  like  the  one  we  have  lost. 
While  greater  economy  in  distribution,  the  elim- 
ination of  superfluous  middlemen,  and  a  brush- 
ing away  of  the  leeches  that  tap  the  stream  of 
food-stuffs  at  various  points  on  its  way  from 
the  farms  to  the  larders  may  afford  some  relief, 
it  is  certain  that  never  again  will  the  American 
people  know  the  higher  foods  to  be  so  abund- 
ant and  cheap  as  they  were  in  the  middle  of  the 
nineties,  when  under  the  stimulus  of  the  home- 
stead bounty  agriculture  had  reached  the  limit 
of  its  facile  expansion.1 

The  trebling  of  farm  lands  in  value,  while 
it  has  converted  millions  of  farm-owners  into 
petty  capitalists,  and  lightened  the  weight  of 
mortgage  indebtedness  which  was  felt  so  acutely 
in  the  early  nineties  and  which  had  much  to 
do  with  nationalizing  the  demand  for  "free 

i  Our  participation  in  the  war  brought  a  confusing  shift  of 
price  levels.  It  is  only  in-  the  period  previous  to  1917  that 
lines  of  fundamental  tendency  may  be  read  from  the  course  of 
prices. 


silver,"  raises  a  formidable  barrier  to  the  ascent 
of  the  farm  laborer.  When  I  was  a  boy,  no  gray- 
haired  man  worked  on  a  farm  for  wages  unless 
he  was  drunkard  or  wastrel.  So  short  and 
easy  was  the  path  to  farm  ownership  that 
virtually  all  the  farm  "hands"  were  less  than 
thirty-five  years  of  age.  With  good  land  worth 
from  flOO  to  |200  an  acre,  the  climb  is 
now  far  longer  and  harder,  and  many,  lacking 
the  requisite  intelligence  and  character,  will  re- 
main hired  laborers  or  renters  throughout  life. 
With  greater  permanency  in  the  farm  la'borer 
class,  its  needs  should  be  more  considered  and 
its  lot  made  more  tolerable.  As  it  comes  to  in- 
clude older  persons,  more  provision  should  be 
made  for  married  men  with  families.  In  time, 
no  doubt,  we  shall  see  much  farm  help  accom- 
modated, as  in  the  Old  World,  in  detached  cot- 
tages instead  of  eating  at  the  farmer's  table  and 
sleeping  in  the  garret.  Even  if  henceforth 
fewer  of  them  can  look  forward  to  eventual 
ownership,  it  does  not  follow  that  farm  labor- 
ers need  be  objects  of  pity.  Many  pioneers 
shortened  their  lives  with  overwork  and  priva- 
tion so  that  it  is  quite  possible  that  a  properly 
protected  and  organized  farm  laborer  class  may 

66 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

enjoy  more  of  the  essentials  of  a  rational  human 
existence  and  see  their  children  better  educated 
than  could  the  settlers  of  the  American  wilder- 
ness. 

§  5 

With  the  frontier  disappeared  one  of  the 
greatest  obstacles  to  the  success  of  the  labor 
movement  in  this  country.  On  the  Pacific  Slope 
not  infrequently  one  comes  upon  the  bearer  of 
a  name  that  thirty  or  forty  years  ago  sent  a 
shiver  down  the  spine  of  the  Eastern  employer. 
He  may  have  been  the  organizer  of  an  aborted 
labor-union,  the  leader  of  a  strike  that  failed, 
or  the  stormy  petrel  of  some  fierce  industrial 
strife.  Often,  too,  one's  host  on  ranch  or  fruit 
farm  proves  to  be  an  intelligent  Eastern  work- 
ing-man who  foresaw  what  was  coming  and  broke 
away  while  yet  there  was  time.  Not  our  last 
frontier  alone,  but  the  earlier  frontiers  as  well, 
have  afforded  haven  to  the  discontented  spirits 
of  the  working  class — the  natural  leaders  who 
would  have  welded  and  wielded  their  class  had 
they  but  stayed  by  it.  Although  to-day  the  em- 
ployers continually  draw  up  into  their  well-paid 
service  many  of  the  brightest  men  in  the  ranks 

67 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

of  labor,  the  greater  stability  and  generalship 
of  the  labor  movement  in  the  last  twenty  years 
is  due  in  part,  no  doubt,  to  the  closing  of  the  old 
outlet  for  insurgent  and  blacklisted  working- 
men. 

§  6 

Having  skimmed  the  cream  off  the  continent, 
having  stripped  the  tenderloin  of  the  quarry, 
we  are  undergoing  a  spiritual  transformation 
like  to"  that  of  a  flush  youth  who,  having  run 
through  his  inheritance,  finds  himself  forced  to 
stoop  for  the  first  time  to  petty  calculations  and 
despised  economies.  Having  scooped  the  lus- 
cious heart  out  of  the  watermelon  we  are  now 
among  the  seeds,  or  even  approaching  the  rind. 
A  century  and  more  of  access  to  boundless  nat- 
ural wealth  fostered  in  the  social  mind  the  con- 
viction that  for  us  all  evils  vanish  in  a  larger 
good  and  that  Divine  Providence  will  see  to  it 
that  Americans  pay  no  serious  penalty  for  their 
folly,  negligence,  or  extravagance.  If  poor 
farming  wore  out  the  soil,  there  were  limitless 
leagues  beyond;  if  fire  were  allowed  to  ravage 
the  forests,  there  were  better  forests  further  on ; 
if  the  grafter  stole  the  public  revenues,  the  citi- 

68 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

zens  jested,  for  was  there  not  enough  prosperity 
to  stand  it?  How  often  facts  mocked  the  hard- 
won  wisdom  of  our  forefathers!  In  America 
somehow  a  "rolling1  stone"  did  "gather  moss." 
"Waste  not  want  not"  was  made  a  joke  by  mine- 
owners  and  lumber-men. 

Moreover,  optimism  seemed  justified  by  the 
irrepressible  growth  of  the  country.  Every 
economic  crisis  was  followed  by  a  higher  wave 
of  prosperity.  Normally  cities,  businesses, 
fortunes,  land  values,  crop  totals,  incomes, 
changed  in  only  one  direction — they  grew. 
Standstill  or  decline  was  an  abnormal  thing,  in 
need  of  explanation.  The  "bull"  temperaments 
tended  in  the  long  run  to  amass  bigger  fortunes 
than  the  "bear"  temperaments.  So  often  did 
the  economic  buoyancy  of  the  country  avert  the 
natural  recompense  of  error  that  the  intelligent 
foreteller  of  such  penalties  was  scoffed  at  as 
"croaker"  and  "calamity  howler"  and  "pessi- 
mist." "Booms,"  frenzied  speculation,  over- 
building, overborrowing,  overdoing  of  public  im- 
provements, overexpansion,  overconfidence,  and 
extravagance  are  among  the  fruits  of  the  beam- 
ing optimism  bred  in  us  by  access  to  huge  stores 
of  natural  wealth.  Now  that  the  American  peo- 

69 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

pie  are  beginning  to  be  squeezed  in  the  vise  of  the 
law  of  diminishing  returns,  they  are  likely  to 
gain  something  of  the  proverbial  canniness  and 
frugality  of  the  Scot. 


Free  land  was  an  equalizer,  for  it  admitted 
all  comers  to  possession  of  the  chief  instrument 
of  wealth  production.  At  the  frontier  no  man 
would  work  long  for  a  farmer  or  pay  rent  when 
for  next  to  nothing  he  could  get  other  land  just 
as  good  and  farm  it  himself.  The  town  artisan 
had  to  be  paid  a  wage  large  enough  to  keep  him 
from  turning  farmer.  Moreover,  such  differ- 
ences as  there  were  in  respect  to  economic  con- 
dition did  not  put  distance  between  people.  In 
general,  class  distinctions  show  themselves,  not 
between  those  who  possess  and  those  who  do  not 
possess,  but  between  those  who  possess  and  those 
who  not  only  do  not  but  apparently  cannot  pos- 
sess. Always  in  the  West — whether  the  "West" 
was  Ohio  or  Idaho — the  rich  banker  has  not  ob- 
jected to  the  penniless  but  capable  young  man 
calling  on  his  daughter,  because  the  banker  had 
been  penniless  himself  when  he  married,  and  be- 
cause he  knew  that  this  young  man  would  be  as 

70 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

well  off  as  the  banker  now  is  when  he  had  reached 
the  same  age.  The  abundance  of  opportunity 
of  the  frontier,  coupled  with  equal  access  to  these 
many  opportunities,  engendered  a  sense  of  social 
equality  which  gradually  became  part  of 
"Americanism,"  and  in  the  older  States  hindered 
the  social  consequences  of  economic  stratification 
from  glaringly  showing  themselves.  Arthur 
Chapman  covers  the  case  in  his  poem,  "Out 
Where  the  West  Begins": 

Out  where  the  handclasp 's  a  little  stronger, 
Out  where  the  smile  dwells  a  little  longer, 

That 's  where  the  West  begins. 
Out  where  the  sun  is  a  little  brighter, 
Where  the  snows  that  fall  are  a  trifle  whiter, 
Where  the  bonds  of  home  are  a  wee  bit  tighter, 

That's  where  the  West  begins. 

Out  where  the  skies-  are  a  trifle  bluer, 
Out  where  friendship  's  a  little  truer, 

That's  where  the  West  begins-. 
Out  where  a  fresher  breeze  is  blowing, 
Where  there 's  laughter  in  every  streamlet  flowing, 
Where  there's  more  of  reaping  and  less  of  sowing, 

That's  where  the  West  begins. 

Out  where  the  world  is  in  the  making, 
Where  fewer  hearts  in  despair  are  aching, 
71 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

That's  where  the  West  begins. 
Where  there 's  more  of  singing  and  less  of  sighing, 
Where  there 's  more  of  giving  and  less  of  buying, 
And  a  man  makes  friends  without  half  trying, 

That  'a  where  the  West  begins. 

O       O 

Again,  the  frontier  has  been  a  maker  of  politi- 
cal democracy  in  this  country.  In  our  early  his- 
tory there  was  a  tendency  toward  class  govern- 
ment and  the  growth  of  vested  interests  in  the 
seaboard  States  where  society  was  slipping  into 
grooves.  The  younger  States  of  the  West,  on 
the  other  hand,  showed  a  strong  tendency  to 
sweep  away  the  props  of  class  rule.  The  States 
of  the  Ohio  Valley  introduced  into  our  political 
practice  the  abolition  of  property  qualifications 
for  the  suffrage,  of  property  and  religious  qual- 
ifications for  office-holding,  the  increase  in  the 
proportion  of  elective  officials  as  compared  with 
appointive  officials,  shorter  terms  of  office,  rota- 
tion in  office,  and  the  submitting  of  State  con- 
stitutions for  popular  ratification.  It  stood  for 
"State's  rights"  as  against  Federal  authority,  for 
State  banks  as  against  the  Bank  of  the  United 
States.  From  the  West  at  different  times  has 
swept  eastward  Jeffersonian  and  Jacksonian  De- 

72 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

mocracy,  Lincoln  Republicanism,  Grangerism, 
Populism,  Bryanism,  and  Progressivism,  to- 
gether with  such  contemporary  political  innova- 
tions as  direct  primary,  initiative,  referendum, 
recall,  and  the  popular  election  of  United  States 
Senators. 

While  the  aggressive  democratic  spirit  kin- 
dled in  the  zone  of  the  most  abounding  and  dif- 
fused opportunity  has  constantly  spread  back 
into  the  older  communities  and  broken  the  spell 
upon  them  of  old  families,  old  wealth,  and  old 
prestige,  it  does  not  follow  that  with  the  ending 
of  the  frontier  we  shall  begin  to  lose  our  democ- 
racy, even  that  we  shall  cease  to  become  more 
democratic.  To  be  sure,  one  of  the  mammae  of 
democracy  is  dried  up.  But,  though  the  physical 
West  passes,  there  is  a  spiritual  West,  such  as 
has  inspired  the  democratic  movement  in  long- 
settled  countries  like  France  and  Norway. 
From  time  to  time  there  appear  emancipating 
spirits  who  spurn  man-made  distinctions  of 
place,  rank,  and  money  and  whose  hearts  go  out 
toward  every  man  as  toward  a  brother.  Such, 
are  the  poets  and  the  prophets;  such  are  the 
humanizing  Isaiahs,  Garrisons,  Mazzinis,  Victor 
Hugos,  and  Tolstois,  who  recall  us  to  natural 

73 


fellowship,  who  impress  us  with  our  likenesses 
even  when  conditions  are  exaggerating  differ- 
ences, who  level  men  at  the  very  moment  new  so- 
cial terraces  are  rising.  Let  no  one  leave  out  of 
the  reckoning  this  spiritual  West. 

§  9 

Now  that  the  frontier  is  gone,  not  so  many  of 
us  will  be  able  to  drink  deep  of  personal  liberty. 
The  pioneers  were  in  thraldom  to  the  swamps, 
the  stumps,  the  shaggy  wilderness,  the  wretched 
roads,  the  fevers,  and  the  "varmints."  They 
lacked  music,  art,  books,  refined  society,  good 
medical  attention,  the  thousand  conveniences, 
pleasures,  and  stimuli  of  the  riper  communities. 
But  they  were  freer  from  the  will  of  other  men 
than  the  more  comfortable  denizens  of  the  East. 
They  were  little  burdened  with  government,  law, 
public  opinion,  custom,  and  conventionality. 
They  knew  and  enjoyed  their  freedom  and  it 
went  to  their  heads,  producing  that  intoxication 
which  the  West  has  always  wrought  on  a  cer- 
tain type.  Henceforth,  the  bold  independent 
spirits  who  have  been  wont  to  find  a  satisfying 
freedom  on  the  spacious  frontier  will  have  to 
endure"  the  dwarfing  pressures  and  accept  the 

74 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

painful  standardizing  of  a  complex  social  life 
without  hope  of  escape,  unless,  indeed,  they  are 
able  to  climb  up  into  the  exhilarating  zone  of 
mastery  where  one  is  still  an  integer.  As 
compensation  the  citizen  can  expect  to  be  bet- 
ter protected,  housed,  warmed,  clothed,  nursed, 
schooled,  informed,  entertained,  and  edified  than 
was  the  old-time  American. 

That  domestic  husbandly  and  the  handicrafts 
are  gone  and  nearly  everybody  lives  by  catering 
to  others  makes  it  imperative  to  conform  to  the 
wishes  of  these  others.  This  has  a  good  side 
in  that  the  vicious  man  is  obliged  to  become 
outwardly  decent  lest  he  lose  employment,  or 
patronage,  or  credit.  The  employer  has  been  a 
mighty  force  for  lessening  intemperance.  Sex 
irregularity  has  been  obliged  to  become  more 
furtive.  The  great  improvement  in  manners  is 
due  in  part  to  the  power  of  firms  and  companies 
to  exact  politeness  of  their  employees  in  dealing 
with  the  public.  Sheer  publicity  is  more  anti- 
septic than  ever  before;  but  the  dread  of  grave 
material  damage  if  one  takes  the  unpopular  side 
or  speaks  out  his  mind  against  some  intrenched 
evil  is  taking  the  backbone  out  of  people  at  an 
alarming  rate.  The  preacher  knows  he  can  be 

75 


struck  through  his  wealthy  pew-holders,  the  ed- 
ucator through  his  school  board,  the  editor 
through  his  big  advertisers,  the  officer  of  a  com- 
pany through  his  board  of  directors,  the  work- 
ing-man through  his  boss.  The  lawyer  fears  to 
lose  the  corporation  cases,  the  physician  dreads 
the  loss  of  his  place  on  the  faculty  of  the  medical 
school,  on  the  hospital  staff,  or  on  the  board  of 
health,  the  merchant  is  silent  lest  the  banks  shut 
off  his  credit,  the  manufacturer  realizes  how  vul- 
nerable he  is  to  the  ferreting  reporter  or  the  fac- 
tory inspector.  No  one  dares  speak  until  others 
are  speaking,  move  until  others  have  led.  After 
suffering  awhile  from  ingrowing  moral  convic- 
tions, people  may  reach  the  point  of  not  having 
any  strong  moral  convictions. 

Backwoods,  prairie,  and  placer  bred  the  go-it- 
alone  spirit  to  which  nothing  was  more  galling 
than  the  taking  of  orders.  Conversely  mill, 
railroad  and  department-store  teach  hierarchy 
and  obedience.  But  the  autocratic  and  harsh 
discipline  of  these  highly  organized  enterprises 
must  be  softened;  for  after  having  drunk  so 
deeply  of  the  sweet  cup  of  individual  liberty, 
the  American  will  not  endure  the  irksome  collar 
of  obedience  unless  he  can  feel,  as  does  the  public 

76 


DOING  WITHOUT  THE  FRONTIER 

school  teacher  or  the  college  professor,  that  he 
bows  not  to  the  will  of  his  immediate  superior, 
but  to  the  requirements  inherent  in  all  organi- 
zation. 


77 


THE  CHANGING  DOMESTIC  POSITION 
OF  WOMEN 

M 

AS  a  boy  I  lived  for  some  time  in  the  family 
of  a  pioneer  uncle  in  Iowa.  His  log-cabin 
was  a  perfect  fairyland  for  a  child  because  of  the 
fascinating  industries  carried  on  in  it.  Before 
the  big  open  fireplace  we  passed  ntany  an  autumn 
evening  paring,  quartering,  and  stringing  apples 
and  hanging  them  in  festoons  about  the  kitchen 
to  dry.  That  was  long  before  grocers  began  to 
purvey  evaporated  apples.  Before  the  advent  of 
winter  great  crocks  of  plum-butter  and  apple- 
butter  were  prepared,  as  well  as  jars  of  marma- 
lade, kegs  of  pickles,  and  barrels  of  salt  pork. 
In  the  smoke-house  hams  and  bacon  were  curing, 
while  in  every  corner  of  the  cellar  lay  a  pile  of 
vegetables  preserved  under  straw  or  dry  earth. 
From  the  ashes  in  the  great  leach  was  drained 
the  lye,  which  when  boiled  from  time  to  time 

78 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

with  refuse  fat  in  the  huge  iron  kettle  outdoors 
furnished  "soft  soap"  for  the  use  of  all  save 
guests.  Not  only  were  there  quilting-frames 
and  candle-molds,  but  discarded  in  the  attic 
lay  a  card,  a  hackle,  a  spinning-wheel,  and  vari- 
ous other  home-made  implements,  the  use  of 
which  lay  quite  beyond  tfre  ken  of  a  boy. 

Now,  at  one  time  these  industries  were  char- 
acteristic of  most  American  households.  Nearly 
all  that  was  eaten  and  worn  in  the  family  had 
been  manufactured  by  the  hands  of  its  women- 
folk. In  those  days  nothing  was  heard  as  to  the 
"economic  dependence"  of  the  wife,  of  her  being 
"supported."  My  aunt,  busy  in  and  about  the 
house,  was  as  strong  a  prop  of  the  family's  pros- 
perity as  my  uncle  afield  with  his  team.  Uncle 
knew  it,  and,  what  is  more,  sJic  knew  he  knew  it. 

Gradually,  however,  a  silent  revolution  has 
taken  place  in  the  lot  of  the  home-staying 
woman.  The  machine  in  the  factory  has  been 
slipping  invisible  tentacles  into  the  home  and 
picking  out,  unobserved  by  us,  this,  that,  and 
the  other  industrial  process.  The  knitting- 
machine  has  taken  the  knitting;  the  power- 
driven  sewing-machine,  the  making  of  garments. 
The  oil-refinery  molds  candles  for  the  household, 

79 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

and  the  soap-manufacturer  .has  made  junk  of  lye 
leach  and  soap-kettle.  The  packing-house  has 
made  the  smoke-house  a  relic,  while  the  store- 
blanket  has  relegated  the  quilting-frame  to  the 
garret.  The  surplus  milk  goes  to  the  creamery, 
so  that  the  churn  is  becoming  a  curiosity.  Can- 
neries of  all  kinds  crowd  the  grocer's  shelves 
with  preserved  fruits  and  vegetables  which  for- 
merly could  be  had  only  by  the  skill  and  care 
of  the  housewife.  So,  one  by  one,  the  operations 
shift  from  home  to  factory  until  the  only  parts 
of  the  housewife's  work  which  remain  unaffected 
are  cooking,  washing,  cleaning,  and  the  care  of 
children. 

It  seems  safe  to  say  that  four  fifths  of  the 
industrial  processes  carried  on  in  the  average 
American  home  in  1850  have  departed  never  to 
return.  What  has  been  done  with  the  energy 
thus  released? 

It  certainly  has  not  been  diverted  to  rearing 
a  larger  brood  of  children.  The  first  census  of 
the  United  States  in  1790  showed  that  in  the 
whole  population  there  were  nineteen  white  chil- 
jdren  under  sixteen  years  of  age  for  every  ten 
white  women  more  than  sixteen  years  of  age. 
In  1900  the  census  revealed  that  the  children  and 

80 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

women  in  the  white  population  were  about  equal 
in  number.1  This  means  that  the  average 
woman  to-day  has  half  as  many  children  to  look 
after  as  had  her  great-grandmother. 

§2 

One  consequence  of  the  shriveling  of  the  house- 
hold in  economic  importance  is  the  great  mi- 
gration of  daughters  from  the  home  where  there 
is  little  for  them  to  do  to  the  factory,  the  laun- 
dry, the  restaurant,  the  store,  the  office,  and  the 
class-room.  At  present  there  are  in  this  country 
not  far  from  eleven  millions  of  women  above  six- 
teen years  of  age  gainfully  employed,  and  the 
proportion  is  rapidly  growing.  Between  1880 
and  1910  the  population  of  females  above 
ten  years  of  age  wlio.  were  at  work  for  money 
rose  from  14.7  per  cent,  to  22  per  cent.,  and  there 
is  no  reason  to  doubt  that'  the  proportion  of 
women  at  work  increased  to  the  same  extent. 
In  1900  one  woman  in  every  five  was  engaged  in 
a  gainful  occupation ;  in  1910  nearly  one  out  of 
every  four  was  a  gainful  worker.  The  results 
of  the  1920  census  are  not  yet  available  but  they 
will  show  the  same  trend.  Women  wage-earners 

i  See  "A  Century  of  Population  Growth" ;  p.  105. 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

are  increasing  in  number  faster  than  men  wage- 
earners  and  form  an  ever  greater  contingent  in 
the  great  industrial  army. 

This  swelling  exodus  out  from  the  home  into 
remunerative  industry  is  not  for  a  moment  to 
be  interpreted  as  a  tendency  for  the  wife  to  quit 
the  domestic  hearth.  To  be  sure,  in  1900  a 
third  of  all  widows  and  more  than  half  the  di- 
vorced women  were  earning  wages,  but  probably 
not  one  wife  in  fifteen  is  working  outside  her 
home.  On  the  whole,  wage-earning  women  are 
single  women,  and  nearly  half  of  these  single 
women  are  less  than  twenty-six  years  of  age. 

Of  these  girl  wage-earners  it  is  pretty  nearly 
safe  to  say  that  four  fifths  of  them  will  marry 
and  five  fifths  think  they  will.  Here  is  the  root 
of  the  reason  why  few  of  them  fit  themselves 
seriously  for  their  work,  take  the  pains  to 
acquire  skill,  or  organize  in  defense  of  their 
interests  as  earners.  Why  bother  with  such 
matters  if  in  a  year  or  two  you  are  going  to  have 
a  husband  to  take  care  of  you? 


Consider,   now,   the   married  woman   in  the 
home.    How  is  she  affected  by  the  passing  of  in- 

82 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

dnstrial  processes  from  her  little  realm?  The 
wife  of  the  unskilled,  poorly-paid  wage-earner 
probably  gets  no  gain  at  all  from  it.  The  hus- 
band's wage  proving  insufficient,  now  that  nearly  t 
everything  used  in  the  household  is  bought,  the 
wife  takes  a  job  in  the  factory  or  goes  out  to  wash 
or  scrub  or  sew,  and  home-life  goes  by  the  board. 
Or  she  adds  to  the  family  income  by  keeping 
boarders  or  by  taking  home  work  given  out  by 
warehouses  or  factories. 

In  general,  the  industrial  home-work  of  the 
wife  is  so  miserably  paid  that  her  economic 
value  to  the  family  may  well  be  less  than  in  the 
days  when  she  made  their  food  and  clothing 
with  her  own  hands.  Before  the  war  an  in- 
vestigation in  Massachusetts  showed  that  half 
the  home-workers  earned  less  than  eight  cents 
an  hour  and  two  thirds  of  them  less  than  ten 
cents.  Half  of  the  home-workers  on  wearing- 
apparel  earned  less  than  seven  cents  an  hour, 
while  half  of  those  producing  paper  goods  at 
home  received  less  than  five  cents  an  hour,  i.  e., 
far  below  a  living  wage. 

The  whittling  away  of  household  industry  by 
the  factory  variously  affects  the  wives  of  the 
better-paid,  e.  g.,  the  skilled  workers.  Since 

83 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

more  and  more  the  family  consumes  the  bough  ten 
rather  than  the  home-made,  there  is  an  increas- 
ing strain  on  the  earnings  of  the  husband. 
There  is  a  growing  need  of  more  money  in  order 
to  meet  the  requirements  of  the  customary  stand- 
ard of  living.  So  the  wife  may  follow  her  dis- 
appearing work  into  the  mill,  asserting  in  pickle 
or  biscuit  factory,  in  cannery  or  millinery  es- 
tablishment, woman's  immemorial  concern  with 
the  production  of  food  and  clothing. 

But  if  the  earnings  of  the  husband  suffice,  the 
wife  continues  in  the  home,  occupying  herself 
in  satisfying  wants  of  a  higher  character. 
Every  time  an  invasion  from  the  factory  releases 
her  from  some  old  task,  she  sets  about  gratifying 
some  higher  want.  She  cleans  and  dusts  and 
tidies  as  never  before.  She  switches  from  mak- 
ing the  useful  to  fabricating  the  ornamental — 
lambrequins,  and  curtains,  and  doilies,  and  fancy 
work.  She  becomes  the  provider  of  comforts 
rather  than  the  provider  of  simple  utilities,  and 
takes  it  upon  herself  to  minister  as  well  as  she 
can  to  the  intellectual  and  esthetic  needs  of  her 
family. 

The  next  higher  economic  class,  the  women- 
folk of  business  and  professional  men,  are  those 

84 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

who  have  experienced  the  greatest  change  in 
their  lot.  Since  their  husbands'  income  avails 
to  purchase  comforts  and  even  luxuries  as  well 
as  utilities,  they  are  entirely  absolved  from 
making  anything  whatever.  Able  usually  to  in- 
stall a  menial  in  the  kitchen,  they  find  them- 
selves possessed,  after  their  children  have 
emerged  from  infancy,  of  a  leisure  such  as  has 
been  throughout  history  the  exclusive  privilege  of 
a  small  aristocracy. 

Visit  the  comfortable  homes,  and  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  you  will  find  that  the  men  are 
hard  at  it  wresting  a  steady  income  from  a  com- 
petitive world.  On  the  other  hand,  perhaps  a 
third  of  the  wives  may  be  called  leisured.  Busy 
they  may  be,  but  they  are  busy  doing  what  they 
please  and  not  what  they  must.  Among  a 
people  that  boasts  of  fewer  elegant  idlers  than 
any  other  well-to-do  people  in  the  world,  the 
household  springs  of  serious  occupation  have  so 
dried  up  that  it  is  a  fact  that  married  women 
are  furnishing  most  of  the  membership  of 
America's  leisure  class. 

§4 

What  did  the  women  do  with  the  leisure  cast 
85 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

into  their  laps  by  the  filling  of  the  home  with 
factory  product? 

Many,  alas,  knew  nothing  better  to  do  with  the 
priceless  gift  than  to  fritter  it  away  in  competi- 
tive ostentation,  in  feverish  reciprocal  entertain- 
ment, in  the  giving  and  receiving  of  empty  atten- 
tions which  they  sought  to  dignify  with  the 
phrase  "social  duties." 

Some,  however,  discovered  a  new  r61e  of  the 
mother  in  respect  to  child  culture,  and  dedicated 
their  leisure  to  educating  and  training  their  chil- 
dren better  than  the  school-teacher  could  do  it. 
Others  spent  it  in  devotional  exercises  and 
church  work,  with  apparently  no  other  outward 
effect  than  to  deepen  in  men  the  impression  that 
religion  is  a  matter  for  women.  A  large  num- 
ber, aware  of  a  certain  void  in  their  lives,  en- 
gaged in  the  pursuit  of  "culture."  Of  how  this 
might  be  gained  they  had  but  the  vaguest  idea, 
but  they  divined  that  you  must  get  far  away  from 
the  present  and  the  practical.  So  forty  or  forty- 
five  years  ago  home-staying  women  began  timidly 
to  band  together  into  self-improvement  clubs, 
where  they  took  turns  in  reading  papers  on 
Etruscan  Art  and  Botticelli  and  Miracle-Plays, 

86 


cribbed  too  often,  I  fear,  from  the  "Encyclopaedia 
Britannica." 

Timidly  they  came  nearer — the  Renaissance, 
Napoleon,  Bismarck;  Corot,  Millet,  Whistler; 
Rousseau,  Pestalozzi,  Montessori — until  now 
there  are  actually  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
women  absorbing  the  best  books  and  lectures 
on  sanitation,  child-welfare,  industrial  diseases, 
domestic  architecture,  social  centers,  and  hous- 
ing-reform. It  has  come  to  the  point  that  ex- 
perts in  community  problems  win  an  earlier 
and  a  fuller  hearing  from  women  than  from 
men. 

Nor  have  the  women's  clubs  stopped  here. 
The  party  "boss"  got  his  grip  on  politics  partly 
because  the  "good"  citizens  were  too  busy  to 
watch  what  he  was  doing  with  his  control. 
Now,  the  interesting  thing  about  the  women 
banded  for  the  study  of  community  concerns  is 
that  they  have  as  much  leisure  as  the  boss  him- 
self. Their  leaders  are  as  able  as  he  and  it  is 
imposssible  to  "square"  them,  for  they  are  ob- 
sessed with  the  idea  that  the  true  aim  of  poli- 
tics is  public  welfare,  not  private  profit.  So  the 
persistent  civic  curiosity  of  the  women  is  play- 

87 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

ing  havoc  with  the  system  that  the  boss  has 
"put  over"  the  male  voters.  In  the  few  years 
that  they  have  been  poking  about,  peering  into 
the  management  of  the  county  almshouse,  the 
disposal  of  police-court  cases,  liquor-law  enforce- 
ment, "red  light"  policy,  the  treatment  of  girl 
strikers,  and  other  incidents  of  local  government, 
the  awesome  veil  has  been  rent,  the  mysteries  of 
man-made  politics  have  been  exposed  to  the  mul- 
titude, and  male  prestige  has  suffered  a  rude 
shock. 

§5 

Bear  in  mind,  too,  that,  while  the  wives  have 
been  gaining  leisure  and  the  courage  to  put  it 
to  such  incendiary  use,  their  yoke-fellows  are 
worse  driven  than  ever.  Competition  in  all 
lines  is  said  to  be  keener,  and  the  average  mer- 
chant or  newspaper  man  will  assure  you  that 
the  demon  of  Work  chases  him  harder  every 
year.  Is  it  not  notorious  that  out  of  deference 
to  the  Tired  Business  Man  the  drama  has  been 
nearly  driven  from  the  stage  by  the  "girl  show"  ? 
Now,  what  is  going  to  happen  when  it  is  the 
wives:  who  have  the  time  to  read  Bergson  and 

88 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

Synge  and  Yeats ;  to  become  acquainted  with  the 
theories  of  Ferrero  and  Metchnikoff  and  Mendel ; 
to  learn  the  findings  of  Goddard  and  Healy  and 
Havelock  Ellis ;  to  have  interpreted  for  them  the 
reports  of  the  immigration  commission,  the 
child-welfare  bureau,  the  industrial  relations 
commission  and  other  significant  documents? 
Shall  we  not  see  the  day  when  on  election  morn- 
ing the  business  man  will  say  to  his  wife: 
"Molly,  you've  had  time  to  read  and  get  wise 
to  these  things.  Tell  me,  now,  what  is  an  execu- 
tive budget?" 

Considering,  besides  this  portent,  that  three 
girls  now  graduate  from  high  school  for  every 
two  boys,  that  nearly  two  fifths  of  the  college 
students  and  of  the  June  crop  of  bachelors  are 
young  women,  that  four  fifths  of  the  teachers 
are  women,  and  that  trained  women  able  to 
"make  good"  are  found  in  increasing  numbers  in 
nearly  all  the  professions,  who  can  doubt  that  the 
influence  of  women  both  in  the  home  and  out  of 
it  is  bound  to  grow  and  that  the  sexes  are  ap- 
proaching an  equality  in  the  management  of 
society  and  in  the  shaping  of  civilization? 


89 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

§  6 

But  is  the  case  really  so  simple  as  that?  As 
the  lot  of  the  wife  becomes  easier,  the  work- 
ing-girl more  often  regards  marriage  as  a  haven, 
a  release  from  hard  work,  a  life-long  security 
won  not  by  yoke-fellowship  but  by  sheer  favor. 
It  is  true  that  young  women  able  and  willing 
to  do  remunerative  work  feel  quite  independent 
of  man's  favor.  But  great  numbers,  lacking  in 
efficiency  or  self-reliance,  shrink  from  the 
thought  of  self-support.  This  type  is  more  tol- 
erant of  male  failings,  vices,  and  bad  habits. 
The  rakish  but  eligible  young  man  appears  to 
meet  with  quite  as  much  indulgence  from  nice 
girls  as  he  did!  two  generations  ago. 

Observe,  too,  how  it  is  nowadays  between 
husbands  and  wives.  When  with  spinning, 
weaving,  knitting,  churning,  pickling,  curing, 
and  preserving,  the  home  was  a  workshop,  the 
wife  was  not  "supported"  by  her  husband.  He 
knew  the  value  of  her  contribution  and  took  her 
seriously,  even  if  he  did  belittle  her  opinions  on 
politics  and  theology.  But,  with  the  industrial 
decay  of  the  home,  it  is  more  and  more  often 
the  case  that  the  husband  "supports"  his  wife. 

In  the  well-to-do  homes — and  it  is  chiefly  here 
90 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  .WOMEN 

that  the  status  of  women  in  general  is  deter- 
mined— the  wife  has  lost  her  economic  footing. 
Apart  from  motherhood,  her  r61e  is  chiefly  orna- 
mental. The  husband  is  the  one  who  counts, 
whose  strength  must  be  conserved,  who  cannot 
afford  to  be  sick.  Of  course,  much  emphasis  is 
laid  on  the  wife's  maternal  contribution.  But, 
aside  from  the  one  wife  in  six  who  rears  no  child, 
will  wives  feel  and  be  able  to  persuade  men  that 
the  bearing  and  rearing  of  three  or  four  children 
offsets  forty  or  fifty  years  of  maintenance? 
Grandmother  bore  on  the  average  six  or  eight 
children  besides  performing  a  hundred  tasks 
which  never  present  themselves  in  the  modern 
household. 

It  is  a  cherished  bit  of  make-believe  that  the 
husband  is  compensated  by  his  wife's  graces,  her 
accomplishments,  her  culture,  her  social  and  pub- 
lic activities  ;  that  the  "companionship"  of  so  fine 
a  creature  is  an  equivalent  for  all  she  costs. 
But  will  nothing  of  patronage  creep  into  the  at- 
titude of  the  bread-winner  toward  his  unproduc- 
tive mate?  Having  given  up  the  role  of  busy 
Martha,  is  it  not  up  to  her  to  assume  the  role 
of  the  adoring  Mary? 

How  will  the  case  appear  in  the  eyes  of  the 
91 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

wife?  As  the  woman  of  leisure  realizes  that 
everything  she  eats,  wears,  enjoys,  and  gives 
away  comes  out  of  her  husband's  earnings,  her 
rising  impulse  to  assert  herself  as  his  equal  is 
damped  by  consciousness  of  her  abject  economic 
dependence.  She  is  tempted  to  pay  for  support 
with  subservience,  to  mold  her  manner  and  her 
personality  to  his  liking,  to  make  up  to  him  by 
her  grace  and  charm  for  her  exemption  from 
work.  This  "being  agreeable"  means  often  that 
she  must  subordinate  her  individuality,  hide  her 
divergent  wishes  and  opinions  or  adopt  his.  But 
this  sort  of  thing  dwarfs  the  woman,  spoils  the 
man,  and  revives  just  the  thing  we  fancied  was 
dead  for  ever,  i.  e.,  male  ascendency. 

So,  although  the  surface  current  seems  to  be 
bearing  women  toward  full  equality  with  men, 
there  is  an  undercurrent  which  runs  in  the  other 
direction.  Eleven  million  girls  and  women  are 
outside  the  home  slowly  becoming  valuable  fac- 
tors in  the  working  world.  But  within  the  home 
are  more  than  twice  as  many  wives,  most  of 
them  constantly  losing  in  economic  significance. 
Will  they  emerge  from  their  shelter  erelong 
and  find  a  way  of  reconnecting  themselves  with 
productive  labor,  or  will  more  and  more  of  them 

92 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

become  passengers  on  a  ship  worked  by  the  other 
sex?  Certainly  the  cumulative  effect  of  numer- 
ous small  inconspicuous  changes  has  brought 
women  into  a  crisis  on  which  turns  the  future 
of  the  relation  of  their  sex  to  society  and  civiliz- 
ation. 

§7 

Alarmists  scent  danger  in  the  opening  of  oc- 
cupations to  women,  especially  the  better-paid 
ones,  such  as  the  professions.  They  fear  lest  so 
many  of  them  will  prefer  financial  independence 
to  domesticity  that  the  marrying  contingent  will 
be  lowered  below  the  danger-point.  It  is  cer- 
tainly true  that  not  more  than  a  quarter  of  each 
generation  of  women  may  turn  their  backs  upon 
motherhood  if  the  continuance  of  the  race  is  to 
be  assured.  Nor  is  it  less  true  that  the  remuner- 
ative job  relieves  young  women  of  that  stern 
necessity  of  attracting  a  mate  which  confronted 
girls  in  the  days  of  our  forefathers,  when  a 
husband  was  the  sole  "meal-ticket"  in  sight. 

It  ought  to  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that 
if  spinsterhood  is  becoming  more  attractive  on 
the  economic  side,  the  same  is  true  of  wifehood. 
Every  year  a  proposal  of  marriage  comes  a  little 

93 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

nearer  to  being  an  offer  of  lifelong  support. 
Every  year,  among  the  people  in  middling  cir- 
cumstances and  above,  the  lot  of  the  married 
woman  is  a  little  easier.  The  working-women 
who  are  so  well  off  as  not  to  covet  marriage 
on  good  terms  are,  indeed,  few  in  number.  The 
overwhelming  majority  are  unskilled  and  poorly 
paid,  so  that  self-support  in  no  wise  turns  them 
from  marriage,  although  it  does  cause  them  to 
be  less  in  a  hurry  about  it. 

§  8 

So  much  is  said  of  women  in  the  professions, 
"bachelor  maids,"  the  higher  cost  of  the  mar- 
ried state,  and  the  postponement  of  marriage 
that  it  comes  as  a  shock  to  discover  that  in  point 
of  fact  Americans  are  one  of  the  most  married 
peoples  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  More  of  us 
are  wedded  than  in  any  country  in  Europe  west 
of  Hungary.  The  Magyars  and  the  Slavs  are 
the  only  Europeans  who  give  themselves  up  to 
matrimony  with  greater  abandon  than  we  do. 

Moreover,  there  is  nothing  to  show  that  we  are 
losing  our  unusual  fondness  for  the  married 
state.  Out  of  a  hundred  American  women  in 
1890,  thirty-two  were  single ;  in  1900,  thirty-one ; 

94 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OP  WOMEN 

in  1910,  only  thirty.  Nor  are  women  passing 
into  wifehood  later  than  formerly.  Of  girls  be- 
tween fifteen  and  twenty-four  years  of  age  half 
were  married  in  1010  as  against  47  per  cent, 
twenty  years  earlier. 

In  order  to  make  this  encouraging  showing,  it 
is  not  at  all  necessary  to  count  in  our  huge  ele- 
ment of  early-marrying  East  Europeans.  Take 
the  girls  of  American  parentage;  in  1890 
just  about  half  of  them  were  married,  in  1910 
nearly  52  per  cent,  had  stood  before  the  altar. 
After  all  the  "to  do"  lest  young  women  lured 
by  chances  of  well-paid  work  turn  their  faces 
away  from  marriage,  it  is  rather  startling  to  find 
that  all  that  has  happened  is  that  one  or  two 
women  out  of  a  hundred  who,  two  decades  ago, 
would  sooner  or  later  have  become  wives,  now 
never  marry  at  all.  The  persistent  spinsters 
have  come  to  the  point  of  constituting  seven  or 
eight  out  of  every  hundred  women — certainly  no 
very  alarming  proportion ;  while  women  who  do 
marry  are  marrying  earlier. 

Some  persons  would  have  us  believe  that  the 
latitude  of  divorce  tolerated  among  us,  whereby 
one  marriage  in  ten  is  terminated  in  a  court,  is 
a  foe  of  matrimony.  The  fact  is  that,  if  any- 

95 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

thing,  it  contributes  to  make  marriage  popular. 
The  more  matrimony  is  seen  to  be  a  trap  from 
which  you  can  never  release  yourself  once  the 
door  has  snapped  to,  the  shyer  will  you  be  of 
entering  it.  Certainly  the  peoples  that  are  de- 
nied all  reasonable  relief  for  conjugal  unhap- 
piness — for  example,  the  South  Americans — are 
just  the  ones  with  the  least  inclination  to  marry 
and  with  the  greatest  illegitimacy. 

§  9 

Many  imagine  that  women  were  never  so  fem- 
inine as  when  the  sex  was  restricted  to  the  home, 
and  dread  lest  contact  with  non-domestic  pur- 
suits is  having  a  masculinizing  effect  upon  them. 
In  truth,  the  tendency  ought  to  be  precisely  the 
reverse.  If  anything,  women  are  coming  to  be 
oversexed.  Formerly  everywhere,  and  even  to- 
day in  most  humanity  outside  of  western  Europe 
and  the  United  States,  the  proportion  of  women 
who  might  reject  motherhood  was  so  small  as 
to  be  negligible.  Women  married  whether  or 
not  they  felt  or  inspired  love.  There  was  no 
other  mode  of  life  open  to  them.  Only  in  the 
home  was  there  a  place  for  them.  But,  now  that 
it  is  easy  and  safe  for  a  woman  to  earn  her  bread, 

96 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

and  now  that  in  almost  any  walk  of  life  she 
can  go  about  without  the  male  protector  at  her 
side,  there  is  a  refusal  of  matrimony  not  only 
by  those  with  a  gift,  a  call,  or  a  cause,  but  also 
by  those  who  lack  tlie  instinct  for  mating  and 
children.  Women  of  a  certain  neuter  or  even 
masculine  endowment  are  now  for  the  first  time 
withholding  their  heredity  from  the  stream  of 
life.  This  means  that  each  generation  of  women 
will  be  the  daughters  of  the  more  feminine  mem- 
bers of  the  previous  generation.  If,  therefore, 
the  rejection  of  marriage  and  motherhood  by  one 
woman  in-  a  dozen  has  any  racial  effect,  it 
ought  to  make  the  female  sex  in  the  course  of 
time  more  thoroughly  feminine  in  its  instincts. 
Whether  this  confinement  of  motherhood  to  the 
more  feminine  women  will  affect  the  psychic  en- 
dowment of  their  sons  as  well  as  their  daughters 
is  a  very  interesting  query. 

§  10 

If  ever  the  number  of  young  women  who  pre- 
fer self-support  with  independence  to  marriage 
becomes  so  large  as  to  imperil  race  continuance, 
it  does  not  follow  that  society  should  close  to 
women  the  doors  that  admit  to  the  higher  kinds 

97 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

of  work,  should  immure  the  handicapped  sex 
again  in  the  conventional  "woman's  sphere" 
from  which  they  have  so  recently  escaped.  It 
would  be  fairer  and  quite  as  effective  for  society 
to  make  matrimony  more  attractive. 

One  means  would  be  to  lift  the  ban  on  the 
woman's  staying  with  her  job  after  marriage. 
At  present  the  couple  are  intimidated  by  the 
sneering  comment :  "She  's  married  a  man  who 
is  n't  equal  to  supporting  his  wife."  With  the 
decreasing  importance  of  women's  labor  in  the 
home,  there  is  greater  need  of  money  income. 
The  sacrifice  involved  in  two  salaried  persons 
undertaking  to  live  on  the  salary  of  one  deters 
both  men  and  women  from  marriage  until  the 
man  has  attained  the  point  of  being  able  to  meet 
the  situation  single-handed.  The  social  con- 
vention against  the  wife  earning  outside  the 
home  may  encourage  children  but  it  undoubtedly 
discourages  matrimony. 

The  throttling  of  alcoholism  is  another  pro- 
marriage  policy.  Liquor  has  been  man's  poison, 
not  woman's;  and  until  lately  a  serious  propor- 
tion of  young  men  were  barred  from  considera- 
tion by  a  sensible  working-girl  because  of  their 
habits.  Is  it  rash  to  estimate  that  at  least  15  or 

98 


DOMESTIC  POSITION  OF  WOMEN 

20  per  cent,  of  sought  young  women  who  re- 
mained single  did  so  because  of  dread  of  becom- 
ing the  wife  of  a  drinker? 

Long  before  throwing  more  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  women  following  or  fitting  themselves 
to  follow  the  higher  callings,  the  true  friend  of 
the  home  will  recognize  that  if  desirable  women 
remain  single  not  all  the  fault  may  lie  with 
them.  Men  may  be  loath  as  well  as  women. 
What  must  be  the  bearing  on  this  point  of  the 
commercialized  prostitution  that  has  been  al- 
lowed to  spread  in  nearly  all  our  cities?  Can 
any  one  doubt  that  a  traffic  providing  men  with 
a  cheap  and  irresponsible  indulgence  of  their  sex 
appetite  is  the  deadliest  foe  of  the  orderly  sex 
relation  that  has  ever  appeared?  At  all  ages  the 
proportion  of  married  persons  is  smaller  in  city 
than  in  country  and  one  cause  is  the  access  of 
city  men  to  this  loathsome  market.  Not  until 
society  has  throttled  these  twin  cobras,  the  liquor 
traffic  and  the  social  evil,  will  it  be  entitled  to 
cast  a  doubtful  eye  upon  the  attitude  of  success- 
ful working-women  toward  matrimony. 


99 


VI 

WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD  * 
§    1 

T  \  7HO  feed  the  current  of  ideas  in  which  our 
*  *  minds  live  and  move  like  fishes  in  a 
stream?  Why,  chiefly  the  clergy,  the  educators, 
the  newspaper  men,  the  lawyers,  and  the  judges. 
Few  of  us  have  opinions  which  have  not  been 
formed  upon  ideas  conveyed  to  us  through  these 
groups.  Now,  although  women  are  a  half  of 
all  folks,  it  is  a  striking  fact  that  very  few  of 
them  are  members  of  these  groups.  Small,  in- 
deed, is  their  part  in  handing  on  directly  to 
adults  the  treasures  of  culture. 

How  many  of  the  sermons  preached  from  our 
pulpits  last  Sunday  came  from  a  woman's 
mind?  About  one  in  171.  And  newspaper  edi- 
torials? Certainly  not  more  than  one  in  thirty. 
And  lectures  in  colleges  and  universities?  Per- 
haps one  in  fifteen.  Of  the  arguments  before 

i  Courtesy  of  "The  Delineator." 

100 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

the  courts  only  one  in  190  is  made  by  a  woman. 

And  as  for  decisions  from  the  bench — which 
fix  the  basic  relations  among  us, — why,  all  of 
them  come  from  male  judges. 

So,  for  all  our  admitting  girls  to  the  colleges 
and  women  to  the  professions,  it  is  safe  to  say 
that  nine  tenths  of  the  river  of  ideas  in  which 
our  minds  are  bathed  flows  out  from  the  lips 
and  pens  of  men.  A  century  ago,  no  doubt,  the 
diffusing  of  culture  was  still  more  a  sex  monop- 
oly. Then,  perhaps,  95  per  cent,  of  opinion- 
making  ideas  reached  the  public  through  men's 
minds.  And  in  Shakspere's  day  it  may  have 
been  98  per  cent.  In  fact,  ever  since  the  learned 
professions  arose,  this  has  been  pretty  nearly  "a 
man-made  world,"  to  use  Mrs.  Oilman's  happy 
phrase. 

Nor  is  there  much  prospect  of  its  being  any- 
thing else — anyhow  not  just  yet. 

Take  the  hundred  brightest  boys  your  county 
produces.  There  is  nothing  to  hinder  their  go- 
ing in  for  leadership  if  they  choose  to.  But 
the  hundred  brightest  girls?  Every  one  realizes 
that,  if  they  go  to  the  pulpit,  the  desk,  the 
sanctum,  the  bar,  and  the  bench,  our  race  will 
run  to  scrubs.  It  will  never  do  for  all  moth- 

101 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

erg  to  be  second-raters.  If  more  than  a  quarter 
of  the  brightest  girls  turn  away  from  marriage 
and  motherhood,  society  may  well  take  alarm. 
In  the  long  run,  the  gifted  women  are  of  more 
value  to  society  as  mothers  than  as  celibate 
preachers  and  teachers  and  editors.  And,  since 
the  rearing  of  a  real  family — say,  four  children — 
consumes  from  sixteen  to  twenty  of  a  woman's 
best  years,  how  can  the  gifted  women  share 
equally  with  the  gifted  men  in  the  leadership  of 
society?  Not  that  the  men  will  always  utter 
nine  tenths  of  all  that  counts,  as  now;  but  shall 
we  ever  see  the  time  when  they  contribute  less 
than  three  quarters? 

§  2 

Is  it  hard  on  women  that  this  is  so  nearly  a 
man-made  world?  Not  if  mind  is  sexless.  But 
as  everybody  realizes,  there  is  sex  in  mind.  If 
men  had  to  live  in  a  world  in  which  nine  tenths 
of  the  sermons,  lectures,  editorials,  court  argu- 
ments, and  judicial  decisions  emanated  from 
women,  would  n't  they  become  a  bit  restive? 
See  how  the  high  school  lad  frets  when  all  his 
teachers  are  women.  Mark  how  men  rage  when 
female  disapproval  threatens  any  of  their  pas- 

102 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

times  and  pleasures.  Is  it  then  not  likely  that 
women  find  themselves  in  a  misfit  world?  Is 
man-made  culture  any  more  congenial  to  normal 
women  than  a  culture  worked  out  chiefly  by  and 
for  women  would  be  congenial  to  normal  men? 

Sex  in  intellect?  No,  but  there  is  sex  in  in- 
stinct. For  purposes  of  her  own  nature  gave 
the  male  an  extra  dose  of  pugnacity.  Have  you 
ever  noticed  how  boys  take  to  sports  in  which 
you  hit  something  with  fist,  or  foot,  or  bat,  or 
mallet,  or  cue,  or  racket,  or  marble,  or  bullet? 
The  thwack  appeases  the  male's  latent  pugnac- 
ity. There  is  a  mighty  throb  of  joy,  an  exqui- 
site moment,  when  the  foot  strikes  the  pigskin, 
or  the  bat  meets  the  ball,  or  your  alley  sends 
flying  the  other  fellow's  marble.  The  "game" 
fish  is  one  that  "strikes"  and  "fights,"  so  that 
the  sportsman  thrills  with  ecstasy.  Girls  at 
play,  on  the  other  hand,  do  not  care  much  for 
the  thwack.  They  like  to  toss  or  catch  the  ball 
rather  than  bat  it.  They  love  dancing  and  skip- 
ping the  rope  and  games  of  chasing  and  being 
chased. 

The  reason  man  carries  cane  or  stick,  while 
the  woman  does  not,  is  that  the  stick  "comforts 
his  innate  ferocity,"  as  Veblen  suggests.  In  his 

103 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

way  of  grasping  and  brandishing  it  one  can  see 
that  his  subconscious  self  is  rapping  the  head  of 
an  imaginary  enemy.  The  angry  man  is  im- 
pelled to  assault  the  person  of  his  enemy.  The 
angry  woman  assails  his  ego  with  stinging  epi- 
thet or  biting  remark.  The  clash  between  women 
is  more  psychic  and  less  animal  than  that  be- 
tween their  men  folk. 

The  instinct  to  conserve  life — another's  as  well 
as  one's  own — is  stronger  in  the  female.  The 
male,  of  course,  reacts  vigorously  to  attack,  for 
this  rouses  his  fighting  spirit ;  but  he  is  less  heed- 
ful than  the  female  of  insidious  danger  calling 
for  caution  and  care. 

Any  doctor  will  tell  you  women  patients  obey 
his  injunctions  better  than  male  patients.  In 
the  "camps"  of  our  Far  West  the  miners  gen- 
erally were  foolhardy  in  handling  explosives  and 
sinking  shafts  until  they  acquired  wives.  It 
was  then  not  long  before  they  began  to  behave 
as  if  life  and  limb  were  worth  taking  trouble 
about. 

The  world  over,  men  are  more  reckless  in  their 
pleasures  than  women.  While  traveling  in  the 
interior  of  China  in  1910,  I  inquired  in  each 
locality  as  to  the  prevalence  of  opium-smoking. 

104 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

In  every  case  the  men  had  succumbed  to  the  vice 
far  more  than  the  women.  Among  us  there  has 
been  a  like  difference  between  the  sexes  in  the  use 
of  strong  drink.  Nowhere  has  the  intemperance 
of  women  come  within  hailing  distance  of  that  of 
their  men.  But  in  China  I  observed  this  queer 
thing;  in  the  worst  districts  the  women  were 
not  so  far  behind  the  men  in  opium-smoking  as 
elsewhere.  The  same  is  true  of  alcoholism.  In 
the  alcoholized  slums  of  London  and  Glasgow 
many  women  tope.  It  seems  that  when  a  vice 
so  overpowers  the  men  that  it  consumes  their 
earnings  and  manhood,  their  women,  abandon- 
ing their  instinctive  caution,  resort  to  the  bowl 
or  the  pipe  in  order  to  forget  their  anguish. 
What  a  pathetic  token  of  despair! 

Years  ago  in  a  Wyoming  saloon — one  of  the 
sociologist's  perquisites  is  the  right  to  go  any- 
where in  the  name  of  "social  investigation"- 
I  observed  a  slight  cow-boy,  who  had  earned  $18 
in  a  month  of  "riding  herd,"  playing  by  himself 
at  the  faro-table.  In  half  an  hour,  with  no  com- 
pensating excitement,  he  had  lost  to  the  dealer 
half  his  month's  pay.  This  set  me  to  wondering 
whether  women  do  such  foolish  things.  Since 
then  I  have  asked  at  least  half  a  hundred  per- 

105 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

sons,  "Have  you  ever  known  a  working-woman 
to  gamble  away  her  wages?"  So  far  I  have  not 
had  an  affirmative  answer. 

In  October,  1917,  a  Cossack  officer  with  his 
company  boarded  our  train  in  the  Caucasus.  In 
the  evening  he  got  hold  of  some  "home-brew" 
at  a  way-station  and  presently  he  was  gloriously 
drunk  and  trying  to  eject  us  all  from  the  coupe. 
Now,  at  a  time  when  Russian  soldiers  were  hoist- 
ing unpopular  officers  on  their  bayonets,  it 
was  almost  suicidal  for  this  officer  to  make  a 
beast  of  himself  before  his  men.  Yet  he  swal- 
lowed the  liquor  knowing  perfectly  well  what  it 
would  do  to  him! 

Weeks  later  I  saw  a  crowd  of  natives  gazing 
curiously  at  a  man  lying  in  the  gutter  of  a  street 
in  Samarkand.  It  was  a  Russian  officer  dead 
drunk.  When  he  put  the  enemy  into  his  mouth 
to  steal  away  his  brains  he  well  knew  what  mad- 
ness it  was  at  this  critical  moment  to  lower  the 
prestige  of  his  uniform  in  the  eyes  of  the  natives. 
But  he  could  not  control  his  hankering. 

§3 

No  doubt  the  craving  for  fire-water  and  the 
love  of  gaming  are  as  strong  in  one  sex  as  in 

106 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

the  other.  If  less  often  women  let  it  run  away 
with  them  must  we  not  conclude  that  women 
have  more  self-control?  Of  course  we  men  try 
to  dodge  this  unpalatable  inference  by  pretend- 
ing that  woman's  hankerings  are  weak. 

Woman  is  the  lesser  man  and  all  thy  passions  matched 

with  mine 
Are  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight:  and  as  water  unto 

wine. 

But  they  can't  put  over  this  fiction  be- 
cause women  show  grip  on  themselves  all  along 
the  line.  Wherever  I  have  gone  I  have  found 
the  women  doing  their  duty,  as  they  saw  it,  bet- 
ter than  the  men  were  doing  their  duty. 

Would  any  one  hold  that  the  Japanese  men 
are  on  as  high  a  moral  plane  as  the  Japanese 
women?  Do  Chinese  women  come  as  short  of 
their  duty  as  Chinese  men?  Among  the  cholos 
of  tropical  South  America  I  found  that  in  the 
typical  instance  it  was  the  woman  who  toiled  and 
saved  and  somehow  brought  up  her  children; 
while  the  father,  lazy  and  self-indulgent  and  un- 
reliable, did  little  to  support  his  family.  And 
where,  the  world  over,  will  you  find  husbands 
living  up  to  their  marriage-vows  as  faithfully  on 

107 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

the  whole  as  wives?  With  us  Americans  the 
moral  interval  between  the  sexes  is  rather  less 
than  elsewhere,  not  because  our  women  are  less 
good,  but  because  our  men  more  nearly  come  up 
to  the  demands  of  their  ideals. 

No  fair-minded  man  will  charge  the  other  sex 
with  special  responsibility  for  the  existence  of 
prostitution.  The  social  evil  uses  women  but 
exists  for  men.  The  demand,  being  much  wider, 
discredits  the  male  sex  much  more  than  the  sup- 
ply discredits  the  female  sex.  Moreover,  two 
fifths  or  more  of  the  prostitutes  are  weak- 
minded,  and  when  one  deducts  from  the  remain- 
der those  who  have  been  entrapped  and  those 
who  have  been  driven  by  want,  the  number  of 
fallen  women  who  follow  their  loathsome  pro- 
fession out  of  liking  must  be  small  indeed. 

What  folly  do  we  find  among  women  to  match 
men's  addiction  to  vice?  Fashion?  But  is  fash- 
ion the  product  of  feminine  demand  as  saloon 
and  brothel  are  products  of  masculine  demand? 
Fashion  grows  out  of  a  demand  for  decoration 
which,  in  turn,  springs  from  the  competition  of 
women  for  marriage.  Among  us  at  present  the 
female  bears  the  burden  of  decoration  which 
in  the  lower  species  is  borne  by  the  male.  Man 

108 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

does  not  need  antlers,  comb,  wattles,  ruff,  crest, 
or  plumes  because  he  offers  his  mate  support. 
The  wife  has  come  to  be  economically  depend- 
ent upon  her  husband — in  most  cases, — and 
hence  there  has  sprung  up  among  women  an  ex- 
aggerated competition  in  decoration  which  is  in- 
cidental to  securing  a  supporting  mate. 

Which  sex  is  responsible  for  the  foot-binding 
that  crippled  the  women  of  China?  At  first 
glance  you  blame  the  mothers  who  bind  the  con- 
fining bandages  upon  the  feet  of  their  little 
daughters.  But  why  does  the  mother  inflict 
such  torture  upon  her  own  flesh  and  blood?  Be- 
cause without  the  "golden  lily"  foot  the  daughter 
will  not  be  sought  in  marriage.  And  are  the 
lads  of  China  so  silly  as  to  consider  only  the 
girl's  foot?  No,  the  taste  of  the  lads  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  determining  which  girls  shall 
be  sought  in  marriage.  It  is  the  fathers  that 
choose  the  brides.  Thus  it  develops  that  this 
terrible  cross — the  heaviest  that  has  ever  been 
laid  on  women  in  a  state  of  civilization — has 
been  laid  on  the  girlhood  of  China  by  the  de- 
natured taste  of  middle-aged  fathers,  each  bound 
that  his  son  shall  have  as  modish  a  wife  as  the 
next  one! 

109 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

Although  worked  out  chiefly  by  and  for  men, 
our  contemporary  culture  professes  to  be  ra- 
tional, and  women  are  expected  to  accept  it 
and  help  hand  it  on.  When  women  revolt  at 
certain  features  of  it,  their  protest  is  regarded  as 
merely  the  reaction  of  feeling  against  reason. 
But  if  we  examine  this  man-wrought  culture 
with  a  critical  eye,  it  appears  that  much  of  it 
rests  on  instinctive  unreasoned  masculine  pref- 
erence. Let  us  probe  it  at  a  few  points. 


When  the  ordinary  man  is  withstood  or  diso- 
beyed by  some  one  within  his  power,  the  "old 
Adam"  surges  up  in  his  breast.  He  clenches  his 
teeth  and  mutters  to  himself,  "I  '11  show  ye  !" 
This  is  why  the  history  of  the  treatment  of  the 
offender  is  so  dismal  —  even  downright  sickening. 
Ever  at  the  shoulder  of  the  men  who  deal 
with  him  —  lawmaker,  judge,  prosecutor,  and,  es- 
pecially, the  jailer  or  warden  —  have  hovered  the 
he-instincts,  calling  for  pain,  ever  more  pain,  in 
subduing  the  recalcitrant.  And  all  the  ugly, 
cruel  things  prompted  by  male  anger  and 
vindictiveness  —  bastinado,  cat-o'-nine-tails,  keel- 
hauling, solitary  confinement,  silence,  the  "black 

110 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

hole" — men  have,  at  one  time  or  another,  draped 
in  shining  white  and  bidden  mankind  bow  down 
to  as  "Justice" !  But  now  women,  some  of  them 
very  clever  at  managing  big  unruly  males,  are 
scrutinizing  the  penal  system  we  men  have  set 
up.  Will  they  be  fooled  by  this  "Justice"  bluff? 
It  is  not  straight  punishment  we  have  to  blush 
for  so  much  as  the  stupid  brutality  in  dealing 
with  incarcerated  men.  Consider  how  the  cap- 
able contriving  school-ma'am  keeps  in  order  her 
headstrong  mischievous  boys.  Does  she  rely  on 
just  the  smart  of  the  rod?  Not  she.  There  are 
many  weapons  in  her  armory — argument,  ap- 
peal, example,  sarcasm,  humor,  rivalry — so  that 
by  one  means  or  another  she  controls  the  bad 
boy  without  much  use  of  the  whip.  Can  you 
imagine  such  a  woman  running  a  penitentiary 
without  exhibiting  a  like  resourcefulness  in  over- 
coming opposition?  If  the  women  we  shall 
presently  see  on  penal  boards  and  commissions 
will  trust  their  own  good  sense  when  they  come 
to  consider  our  prisons,  and  not  swallow  all  that 
the  men  tell  them,  there  will  eventually  be  more 
management  in  them  and  less  punishment. 


Ill 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

§  5 

As  soon  as  the  democratic  movement  of  about 
a  century  ago  bestowed  the  ballot  upon  masses 
of  raw,  instinctive  American  men,  their  crude 
pugnacity  began  to  pervert  politics  into  mimic 
warfare.  The  citizens  went  asunder  into  two 
camps — the  political  parties, — each  of  which  de- 
veloped a  groundless  hostility  to  the  other.  Po- 
litical discussion  borrowed  from  fighting  such 
words  as  "campaign,"  "battle,"  "the  enemy," 
"chief,"  "slogan,"  and  "banner."  It  imported 
military  features  such  as  uniforms,  marching 
companies,  and  torchlight  processions.  "Ral- 
lies" were  held  as  the  Indians  held  war-dances 
— to  get  up  fighting  steam.  Success  at  the  polls 
was  celebrated  in  the  spirit  of  the  triumphant 
game-cock.  The  winning  party  called  it  a  "vic- 
tory," argued  that  "To  the  victors  belong  the 
spoils,"  and  thereupon  proceeded  to  convert  the 
public  officers  into  party  assets. 

Thus  out  of  militarized  politics  was  born  that 
foul  thing  the  "spoils  system"  which  for 
more  than  half  a  century  disgraced  American 
democracy  and,  the  world  over,  gave  popular  gov- 
ernment a  black  eye.  When  I  was  a  student  in 
Germany  thirty-four  years  ago,  it  was  our  de- 

112 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

based  politics  that  was  oftencst  offered  as  a  justi- 
fication for  keeping  the  Hohenzollerns.  So  that 
in  a  way  our  "spoils  system"  made  possible  the 
World  War. 

Male  intelligence  finally  cut  away  the  ugly 
growth,  but  still  our  man-managed  politics  re- 
tains the  blare  and  clash  dear  to  the  heart  of 
juveniles.  Now  that  women  vote,  the  men  who 
run  politics  want  to  lure  them  into  the  parties  as 
now  constituted,  make  thick-and-thin  partisans 
of  them,  and  pervert  thoughtful  female  citizens 
into  excited  screeching,  flag-waving  viragos. 
They  will  have  vehement  female  Republicans  or 
vehement  female  Democrats  on  the  party  com- 
mittees, but  the  male  politicians  have  not  the 
slightest  intention  of  surrendering  the  reins. 
Still  less  do  they  intend  to  give  any  recognition 
to  the  critical  party-lukewarm  women  who  want 
to  know  what  all  this  political  hullabaloo  and 
pother  is  about. 

The  women  will  help  demasculinize  our  poli- 
tics if  they  hold  aloof  from  political  ghost-danc- 
ing, form  their  own  non-partisan  voters'  organ- 
izations, and  cultivate  in  their  ranks  the  civic 
rather  than  the  party  spirit.  Instead  of  allow- 
ing themselves  to  be  herded  and  tagged,  let  them 

113 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

stand  apart  and  incalculable,  and  the  parties 
will  come  to  them.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  they 
throw  themselves  into  politics  as  into  a  game, 
they  will  actually  corrupt  politics,  for  on  ac- 
count of  their  fair-play  sense  being  less  developed 
than  men's  they  will  be  trickier  and  more 
crooked. 

§  6 

Looked  at  philosophically,  business  is  simply 
the  social  system  of  making  and  distributing 
goods.  It  exists  to  serve  the  public,  but  society 
allows  individuals  to  make  money  in  business  be- 
cause not  otherwise  can  it  obtain  their  services. 
That  the  claims  of  these  profit-seekers  should  ac- 
tually take  precedence  over  life  and  limb,  over 
health  and  morality,  is  preposterous.  Yet  good 
men,  who  are  not  in  the  least  financially  inter- 
ested, oppose  us  when  we  try  to  get  the  children 
out  of  the  factory  into  the  school,  abolish  night 
wrork  for  women,  make  factory  conditions  such 
that  the  health  of  working-girls  will  not  suffer, 
pull  down  unsanitary  tenement-houses,  and  re- 
quire vessels  to  carry  enough  life-boats  and  sea- 
men to  save  the  passengers  in  case  of  disaster. 

The  reason  is  that  their  susceptible  instinct  for 
114 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

fighting  has  led  the  less  thoughtful  men  to  mis- 
conceive business  as  they  have  misconceived  poli- 
tics. They  have  come  to  look  upon  it  as  a  prize- 
ring,  where  men  battle  one  another  for  fortunes. 
It  is  a  pity  that  in  these  fights  some  of  the  inno- 
cent public  get  hurt,  but  it  can't  be  helped.  It 
won't  do  to  spoil  the  match.  To  check  the  sale  of 
diseased  meat,  or  "doctored"  canned  goods,  or 
"salted"  mines,  or  spurious  oil-stock,  or  watered 
securities,  or  town  lots  under  Lake  Michigan ;  to 
curb  peonage,  or  cornering,  or  combining,  or  re- 
bating, or  espionage,  or  blacklisting,  would  be 
like  depriving  the  prize-fighter  of  his  shrewdest 
blows,  his  cleverest  tricks.  So,  obsessed  by  this 
"arena"  or  "great  game"  idea  of  business,  num- 
bers of  humane  and  well-disposed  men  rush  to 
the  aid  of  business  when  it  seeks  to  evade  salu- 
tary regulation  in  the  public  interest. 

Of  themselves,  women  do  not  arrive  at  this 
false  conception.  Their  eyes  are  clear  enough  to 
see  that  business  exists  in  order  to  serve  the  pub- 
lic, that  money-making  by  business  men  is  not  its 
primary  aim.  In  their  simplicity  of  heart,  the 
poor  things  insist  that  the  palming  off  of  putrid- 
ity and  poison  in  the  guise  of  food  upon  mothers 
in  quest  of  nourishment  for  the  children  they 

115 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

have  risked  their  lives  to  bring  into  the  world  is 
not  business  at  all  but  sheer  villainy! 

To  curry  favor  with  advertisers,  actual  and 
potential,  thousands  of  newspapers  and  periodi- 
cals over  our  country  are  substituting  the  false 
prize-ring  idea  of  business — with  immunity  of 
business  men  from  "interference" — for  the  pub- 
lic-service idea.  If,  in  the  face  of  this  vast  poi- 
sonous propaganda,  woman  clings  to  her  own 
sound  idea  of  business,  it  will  be  because  she 
confides  in  her  common  sense  and  will  not  let 
men  fool  her. 

§  7 

Armament  competition,  militarism,  and  war 
are  diseased  growths  springing  chiefly  from  the 
masculine  instincts  of  domination,  pugnacity, 
and  destruction.  They  are  no  more  implied  in 
the  coexistence  of  states  than  "pistol-toting" 
and  dueling  are  implied  in  the  coexistence  of  in- 
dividuals. It  is  chiefly  because  men  run  them 
that  states,  when  they  are  crossed,  bristle  up  like 
wild  boars.  Women  do  not  resort  to  bloodshed 
to  settle  their  disputes,  and  states  would  not  do 
so  if  they  reflected  woman's  bent. 

The  fact  that  some  of  the  worst  chauvinists 
116 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

and  force-worshipers  are  women,  that  in  bel- 
ligerent nations  women  are  among  the  most 
obstinate  "die-hards"  and  haters,  does  not  prove 
woman  bellicose  by  nature.  It  proves  simply  that 
she  can  be  duped.  By  making  out  the  war  to  be 
"defensive"  and  representing  the  enemy  as  aim- 
ing to  destroy  her  sons  and  her  home,  the  wily 
militarists  arouse  and  enlist  woman's  maternal 
and  life-conserving  instincts. 

No,  in  faith,  it  is  the  men  that  must  bear  the 
blame  for  war.  Until  their  minds  are  drugged 
with  falsehoods  women  see  wholesale  homicide 
for  what  it  is.  When  right  after  the  worst  self- 
inflicted  calamity  that  has  ever  befallen  the 
white  race,  one  hears  bull-necked  militarists  de- 
tail with  calmness — nay,  even  with  professional 
zest — what  "we"  will  do  to  our  enemy  in  the 
"next  war" — ignoring  always  what  the  enemy 
will  be  doing  then  to  us, — one  is  tempted  to  let 
the  women  take  entire  charge  in  the  hope  that 
they  would  put  these  ultra-hes  where  they  be- 
long— in  the  mad-house! 

During  the  age-long  struggle  to  extend  the 
reign  of  law,  the  ultra-hes  ruffled  up  at  every 
suggestion  of  arbitrating  private  disputes  or 
submitting  them  to  a  tribunal.  The  courts 

117 


have  cut  the  combs  of  these  game-cocks,  but  it  is 
just  the  same  spirit,  inter-reflected  among  mil- 
lions of  males,  that  gives  us  the  haughty  defiant 
state,  willing  to  enter  a  bout  of  mass  slaughter 
rather  than  yield  a  point.  It  is  to  be  hoped 
that  the  new  women  citizens  in  all  lands,  re- 
jecting the  homicidal  traditions  of  the  he-state, 
will  impart  to  the  government  something  of 
their  own  reasonable  and  pacific  disposition. 

o     o 

Many  of  the  religions  bear  the  stamp  "man 
made."  The  Mohammedan  heaven  with  its 
bands  of  houris  to  solace  the  faithful  is  ob- 
viously by  and  for  a  man.  Valhalla — the  Norse 
heaven — where  warriors  fight  all  day  and  was- 
sail all  night,  must  have  been  born  in  the  imag- 
ination of  the  male.  ,What  attraction  would  it 
have  for  a  pious  woman?  Note,  too,  how  for 
thousands  of  years  the  deity  has  been  "He." 
Surely  it  is  as  easy  to  think  of  ourselves  as  off- 
spring of  a  divine  Mother  as  of  a  divine  Father ! 
In  fact,  through  the  ancient  mother-descent 
period  the  deities  were  mostly  goddesses.  There 
is  a  queer  old  Babylonian  inscription  in  which  we 
catch  the  deity  changing  sex,  for  in  the  upper 

118 


WOMEN  IN  A  MAN-MADE  WORLD 

part  of  it  the  pronoun  is  "She"  and  in  the  lower 
part  "He." 

Christianity  started  without  sex  bias  and  ap- 
pealed as  much  to  one  sex  as  to  the  other.  It 
is  no  more  a  "he"  religion  than  a  "she''  religion. 
It  is  just  "human,"  and  that  is  one  cause  of  its 
success.  But  men  got  it  under  their  control 
and  masculinized  it  so  far  as  they  could. 
They  allowed  no  women  to  be  priest  or  prelate, 
stressed  the  hell-fire  (fear)  motive  as  women 
would  never  have  done,  and  let  it  be  overgrown 
by  a  life-hating  asceticism,  which  woman's  in- 
stincts tell  her  is  sheer  nonsense. 

§  9 

Women  may  vote,  but  if  the  men  direct  the 
thinking  behind  their  votes,  men  will  rule 
society  as  heretofore.  To  free  their  minds 
women  should  do  two  things: 

First,  they  should  get  by  themselves  and  try 
to  arrive  at  a  point  of  view  of  their  own  regard- 
ing social  questions.  If  intelligent  developed 
women  on  exchanging  views  find  that  a  certain 
man-made  institution  or  doctrine  grates  upon 
their  natures  or  revolts  them,  they  may  well  be- 
come suspicious  of  it.  Let  them  heed  the  hints 

119 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

of  their  womanly  intuitions  and  instincts. 
Second,  instead  of  accepting  uncritically  what 
the  other  sex  hands  them,  women  should  endeav- 
or to  drill  down  to  fundamentals.  Let  them 
hear  what  impartial  sexless  science  has  to  say. 
Even  if  they  are  men,  the  spokesmen  of  science 
will  not  impose  on  them  the  product  of  sex- 
biased  thinking.  The  economists  will  not  teach 
the  prize-ring  idea  of  business,  the  political  scien- 
tists will  not  recommend  militarized  politics,  the 
penologists  will  not  advocate  terroristic  treat- 
ment of  the  offender.  By  harking  back  to  first 
principles  instead  of  falling  in  with  current  mas- 
culine conventions,  women  will  save  themselves 
from  being  puppet  voters  pulled  by  strings  in  the 
hands  of  men. 


120 


VII 

PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS  * 
§   1 

T  F  there  is  one  thing  on  which  all  men  have  at 
•^  all  times  agreed,  it  is  the  beauty  and  excel- 
lence of  philanthropy.  In  the  days  before 
the  common  people  had  gained  control,  govern- 
ment made  no  effort  to  relieve  human  suffering, 
and  the  resources  for  its  alleviation  had  to  be 
coaxed  out  of  private  hands.  To  the  ministers 
of  relief  the  generous  giver  seemed  a  saint,  and 
so  the  tradition  grew  up  that  it  is  unbecoming  to 
"look  a  gift  horse  in  the  mouth." 

Inevitably  the  gratitude  and  admiration 
which  the  public  feels  for  benevolence  is  taken 
advantage  of  by  those  seeking  to  ingratiate  them- 
selves with  their  fellow-citizens.  It  has  long 
been  recognized  by  the  sponsors  for  charitable 
enterprises  that  the  candidate  for  public  office 

i  Courtesy  of  "The  Atlantic  Monthly." 

121 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

offers  an  easy  mark  for  the  collector.  The  pop- 
ularity-hunter has  always  appreciated  the  wis- 
dom of  subscribing  handsomely  to  benevolent  en- 
terprises. Infamous  businesses  have  sought  to 
insure  tolerance  for  their  nefarious  operations 
by  giving  heavily  and  conspicuously  to  charities 
with  a  strong  sentimental  appeal.  Liquor-deal- 
ers and  proprietors  of  gambling-houses  and 
keepers  of  low  resorts  have  been  prompt  with 
big  contributions  for  the  relief  of  visible  dra- 
matic suffering,  such  as  the  hunger  or  cold  of 
women  and  children. 

In  the  bad  old  days  of  bank  failures,  the  cap- 
italist who  had  slipped  out  of  the  back  door  of  a 
bank  with  a  satchel  of  loot,  while  the  tricked 
depositors  were  yammering  in  vain  at  the  front 
entrance,  sought  to  turn  aside  public  odium  and 
win  his  way  back  to  respectability  by  a  con- 
sistent course  of  diplomatic  and  ostentatious 
giving.  Public  utility  companies  have  often 
made  a  point  of  subscribing  to  charitable  and 
civic  undertakings,  and  their  generosity  has  fluc- 
tuated pretty  closely  with  the  imminence  of  at- 
tack upon  their  privileges  and  their  policies. 

The  resort  to  philanthropy  as  a  means  of  pro- 
pitiation becomes  more  general  as  the  public  be- 

122 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

comes  more  and  more  critical  of  the  ways  of 
business.  A  dozen  years  ago  it  was  often 
predicted  that  "muck-raking''  would  so  wound, 
exasperate,  and  alienate  the  rich  that  the  foun- 
tains of  benevolence  would  dry  up.  Exactly  the 
opposite  has  occurred.  Exposure  has  had  a 
wonderful  effect  in  loosening  the  purse-strings 
of  the  exposed  and  exposable.  As  the  imperti- 
nent question,  "Where  did  he  get  it?"  becomes 
more  insistent,  and  busybodies  with  lanterns  go 
poking  and  peering  about  the  foundations  of 
majestic  fortunes,  the  rush  to  philanthropic 
cover  becomes  ever  more  noticeable. 

All  the  gifts  by  which  wrong-doers  contrive  to 
cover  their  nakedness  with  the  mantle  of  respect- 
ability cost  society  more  than  they  are  worth. 
They  are  virtually  purchases  of  unmerited  leni- 
ency with  money,  and  tend  to  break  down  the 
moral  law  just  as  compounding  a  felony  breaks 
down  the  criminal  law.  It  would  be  well  if  gifts 
of  ill-gotten  wealth  were  cast  back  into  the  teetli 
of  the  giver  until  he  gave  evidence  of  repentance 
and  restitution.  But,  from  the  nature  of  the 
case,  a  compromising  donation  almost  never 
meets  with  such  a  reception.  It  is  a  gift  to  a 
particular  charity — a  babies'  fresh-air  fund,  a 

123 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

newsboys'  home,  or  a  rescue  mission.  The  direc- 
tors of  the  charity  have  this  work  at  heart  and 
naturally  feel  that  the  Spartan-like  rejection  of 
a  large  and  much-needed  contribution  would  be 
tantamount  to  engaging  in  moral  sanitation  at 
the  expense  of  the  babies  or  newsboys  or  Magda- 
lens.  Each  charity,  therefore,  is  under  a  strong 
inducement  to  stick  to  its  own  task,  take  thank- 
fully whatever  money  comes  to  it  for  its  work, 
and  refrain  from  facing  broad*  questions  as  to  the 
relation  between  modes  of  wealth-getting  and  the 
social  welfare. 

This  is  the  reason  why  private  unendowed 
charities  must,  on  the  whole,  be  listed  among  the 
static  rather  than  the  dynamic  forces  in  society. 
They  have  every  temptation  to  center  their  at- 
tention on  their  own  bit  of  blessed  work  and  to 
take  the  world  as  they  find  it.  Why  should  they 
entertain  questionings  that  might  oblige  them  to 
discriminate  between  donations?  What  wel- 
come will  they  have  for  ideas  which  are  likely 
to  offend  or  alarm  their  donors?  Have  they 
not  every  inducement  to  regard  the  class  of  poor 
whom  they  serve,  and  the  class  of  rich  who  pro- 
vide them  with  the  means  of  serving  the  poor, 
as  natural  and  fixed  features  in  the  social 

124 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

system?  So  we  have  the  anomaly  that  groups 
of  people  who  have  a  very  wide  knowledge  of 
special  conditions,  and  who  have  acquired  pre- 
cious experience  in  particular  lines  of  social  serv- 
ice, have  little  to  say  when  projects  of  social 
reconstruction  are  brought  upon  the  carpet. 
Not  only  do  many  of  them  hold  aloof  from  con- 
structive social  reformers,  but  often  they  throw 
cold  water  on  proposed  remedies  and  policies 
which  are  in  successful  operation  elsewhere. 

There  is  another  and  a  greater  limitation  upon 
private  philanthropy.  Of  late  we  have  dropped 
the  old,  simple,  soothing  explanation  of  the 
cause  of  human  misery.  Nowadays  we  know 
too  much  about  distress  to  dismiss  it  as  merely 
the  result  of  unfitness  for  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence. We  have  learned  that  people  struggle, 
not  in  still  water,  but  in  an  agitated  medium 
full  of  up-currents  and  down-currents;  that 
poor  swimmers  may  be  borne  up  and  good  swim- 
mers may  be  carried  down.  A  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  social  workers  took  to  investigat- 
ing seriously  the  head-waters  of  the  endless  flow 
of  miserable  people  defiling  before  them.  They 
have  traced  up  the  tributaries  of  this  flood,  and, 
instead  of  finding  their  sources  to  be  individual 

125 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

congenital  defects,  they  have  found  many  of  them 
to  be  adverse  social  conditions.  This  being  true, 
the  really  big  thing  to  do  is  not  just  to  handle 
the  current  of  dependents  as  it  flows  past,  but  to 
get  at  the  sources  and  find  a  way  of  plugging 
them  up.  Nature  cannot  be  changed — save  by 
the  slow  methods  of  eugenics, — congenital  weak- 
ness cannot  be  cured,  but  an  adverse  social  con- 
'dition  admits  of  its  being  removed. 

Some  of  these  conditions  can  be  removed  with- 
out disturbing  anybody  much,  unless  it  be  the 
taxpayer.  Such  are  city  congestion,  or  convivial 
social  customs,  or  truancy,  or  lack  of  recreation 
facilities.  But  most  of  the  adverse  social  con- 
ditions are  mixed  up  with  some  lucrative  busi- 
ness, and  you  cannot  go  about  to  abolish  them 
without  having  a  business  interest  on  your  back. 
The  social  conditions  which  create  down-cur- 
rents are  usually  conditions  of  work  or  condi- 
tions of  living — including  under  this  latter,  hous- 
ing, food,  and  recreation.  Now,  the  caterers  to 
vice  who  seize  upon,  pervert,  and  exploit  the  in- 
stinct of  young  people  for  pleasure,  have  been 
pretty  well  outlawed,  and  there  is  no  danger 
lest  social  workers  be  embarrassed  by  donations 
from  that  quarter. 

126 


Few,  indeed,  are  the  legitimate  charities 
which  have  been  brought  under  any  obligation  to 
the  liquor  traffic,  gambling,  the  social  evil,  or  the 
commercialized  theater.  Only  a  few  years  ago, 
however,  very  respectable  donors  were  protest- 
ing against  raising  the  question  of  the  hoirsiug 
of  the  working-class  population.  Happily,  the 
movement  for  the  betterment  of  housing  is  now 
so  far  advanced  that  it  has  become  disgraceful 
knowingly  to  draw  rentals  from  rotten  and  dis- 
ease-breeding tenement-houses.  People  who  care 
to  be  respected  have  bowed  to  the  require- 
ments of  the  housing  laws  or  else  shifted  their 
investments  to  other  kinds  of  property.  This 
leaves  the  real  fight  to  center  around  the  ques- 
tions of  the  conditions  and  pay  of  labor. 

Now,  there  are  few  fortunes  which  do  not  rest 
on  businesses  that  are  more  or  less  sensitive  to 
such  questions.  The  proposition  that  the  con- 
ditions of  labor  need  amendment  if  we  are  go- 
ing to  lessen  very  much  the  flow  of  misery  and 
degradation,  is  a  terrible  shock  to  the  whole 
policy  of  reliance  on  private  philanthropy.  Few 
indeed  are  the  administrators  of  unendowed  phil- 
anthropies who  can  advance  many  steps  along 
this  path  without  barking  their  shins. 

127 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 


In  Pennsylvania  steel  towns  the  Young  Men's 
Christian  Association  has  been  quite  inert  with 
respect  to  any  problem  of  the  steel-  workers  which 
involves  their  relations  to  the  company  —  such  as 
the  effects  of  the  seven-day  week,  the  twelve-hour 
day,  the  all-night  shift,  the  twenty-four-hour  turn 
every  other  week,  or  the  preventable  work  acci- 
dents —  for  the  reason  that  much  of  the  money 
that  runs  it  comes  from  the  officers  and  superin- 
tendents of  the  mills. 

To  be  sure,  the  association  inspires  young  men 
to  lead  a  cleaner  life,  but  what  in  mill  towns  is 
this  problem  compared  with  the  problem  of  con- 
ditions of  work?  I  talked  once  with  an  asso- 
ciation secretary  about  conditions  in  the  West 
Virginia  coal-field.  In  one  district  where  he  has 
a  strong  work,  the  company  owns  35,000  acres 
of  land,  —  everything  except  the  right-of-way  of 
the  railroad  through  that  district.  The  moment 
one  leaves  the  right-of-way,  the  company  may 
treat  him  as  a  trespasser.  If  an  investigator 
goes  there  without  company  authorization  he 
may  be  treated  as  a  trespasser  the  moment  that 
he  steps  from  the  depot  platform;  if  a  labor 

128 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

organizer  goes  in  there,  the  company  can  order 
him  out  of  the  house  of  any  employee;  a  mission- 
ary going  in  there  must  have  a  company  permit. 
Moreover,  a  band  of  company  sluggers,  known 
as  the  "wrecking  crew,"  takes  in  hand  any  agi- 
tator or  organizer  who  comes  in,  and  beats  him 
up  so  that  he  cannot  proceed  with  his  purpose. 

I  asked  the  association  secretary  what  he 
thought  of  this  feudalism.  He  replied  that  such 
a  system  is  necessary  under  the  conditions  and 
that  it  produces  wonderful  results.  Prostitutes 
and  gamblers  are  kept  out,  there  are  no  saloons, 
liquor  can  be  brought  in  only  on  order,  and  the 
company  allows  no  liquor  wagon  to  leave  a  case 
of  beer  at  any  house  where  lately  there  has  been 
drunkenness  or  "rough-house."  This  man  was 
a  good  man,  but  he  did  not  consider  whether  the 
system  was  making  men  or  making  serfs.  He 
was  interested  only  in  whether  the  miners  drank, 
and  how  they  lived.  The  only  association  secre- 
tary who  could  succeed  in  that  district  would  be 
one  who  took  that  point  of  view,  for  much  of  his 
support  came  from  the  company,  which  was  in- 
terested in  preventing  the  men  from  making 
themselves  unfit  for  their  work. 

In  a  certain  city  an  energetic  association  sec- 
129 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

retary  was  just  completing  Ms  fund  for  a  fine 
new  building.  One  night  his  wife  was  called 
out  to  a  case  of  distress,  through  which  he  got 
an  insight  into  the  bad  conditions  surrounding 
young  working-women  in  his  city.  After  care- 
fully getting  up  his  facts,  he  formed  a  committee, 
secured  speakers,  and  announced  that  on  Friday 
there  would  be  a  public  meeting  to  consider  the 
problem  of  the  young  working-women  in  local 
industries.  Promptly  he  was  summoned  by 
telephone  to  meet  the  directors  of  his  association, 
and  when  he  entered  the  room,  one  of  his  Chris- 
tian backers  burst  out  upon  him  with,  "What  in 
h — 1  do  you  mean  by  getting  up  this  public  meet- 
ing? Don't  you  know  I  've  got  eighty  girls 
working  in  the  basement  of  my  department- 
store?"  His  other  directors  were  equally  stern, 
and  he  was  ordered  to  call  off  his  meeting  or  lose 
all  the  important  contributions  to  his  building 
fund.  He  held  his  meeting  and  immediately 
thereafter  resigned. 

I  greatly  admire  the  Young  Men's  Christian 
Association,  and  the  only  reason  that  I  mention 
it  so  often  here  is  because  I  have  oftener  stum- 
bled upon  its  problems.  But  it  is  no  more  em- 

130 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

barrassed  in  this  respect  than  are  the  church  and 
the  church  philanthropies. 

Nor  are  the  secular  charities  free.  During  a 
strike  of  the  iron-molders  in  a  mining-machin- 
ery works  in  a  State  capital,  the  company  de- 
clared a  lock-out  and  advertised  throughout  the 
State:  "Wanted,  skilled  iron-molders.  Good 
pay.  No  strike."  Some  molders  removed  to  the 
capital  to  get  this  work  and  found  too  late  that 
they  were  to  be  used  as  strike-breakers.  Two 
such  families  sought  relief  of  the  Associated 
Charities,  and  the  secretary  expostulated  with 
the  president  of  the  machinery  company  for 
bringing  up-state  iron-molders  into  distress  by 
luring  them  into  a  strike  situation.  The  reply 
he  got  was :  "You  people  can't  complain  of  hav- 
ing to  handle  such  cases.  Don't  we  contribute 
$150  a  year  to  your  work?" 

A  student  of  mine,  after  three  years  of  charity 
organization  work,  said  to  me :  "Professor,  I  >ve 
quit.  There  's  nothing  in  it.  The  game  's  too 
thin.  We  coax  money  from  the  people  who  are 
the  beneficiaries  of  the  abuses  that  produce  the 
wrecks  we  deal  with.  They  let  us  deal  with  the 
wrecks,  but  we  can't  touch  or  even  show  up  the 

131 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

conditions  that  produce  them,  because  that 
would  affect  their  income."  And  the  young  man 
concluded :  "No  more  for  me.  I  'm  going  to  be 
a  factory  inspector,  or  something  of  that  sort, 
where  I  won't  be  a  dead  letter." 

§  3 

The  head  worker  of  a  social  settlement,  who 
had  made  plans  for  a  much-needed  housing 
investigation  in  the  vicinity  of  the  settlement, 
had  to  ditch  the  investigation  because  real  estate 
owners,  who  contributed  each  a  few  hundred 
dollars  a  year  to  the  settlement  fund,  sent  word 
that  they  were  able  to  look  after  their  property 
themselves. 

In  another  case,  a  board  representing  the 
"donor"  point  of  view  so  curbs  the  head  worker 
in  his  endeavors  to  take  part  in  the  movements 
affecting  the  welfare  of  his  neighborhood  that 
he  avows  to  me  that  he  is  straining  every  nerve  to 
gain  sufficient  financial  support  in  his  neighbor- 
hood to  justify  him  in  cutting  loose  entirely  from 
down-town  philanthropists. 

A  social  worker  who  had  resided  in  many 
settlements  said  to  me :  "Most  of  the  successful 
settlement  heads  that  I  know  are  one  thing  to 

132 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

their  boards  and  a  quite  different  thing  to  their 
clientele.  Unless  they  can  play  this  game  well, 
they  are  lost.  For  if  at  the  demand  of  their 
boards  they  exclude  radicals  and  socialists  from 
settlement  clubs  and  gatherings,  censor  the  list 
of  speakers,  and  denature  the  discussions  before 
the  men's  club,  they  lose  their  hold  on  the  neigh- 
borhood. If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  settlement 
is  a  place  of  free  speech  and  the  residents  show 
a  lively  interest  in  everything  affecting  the  wel- 
fare of  the  neighborhood,  no  matter  what  em- 
ployers or  corporations  they  may  fall  afoul  of, 
they  lose  their  hold  on  the  board." 

The  opposition  of  boards  of  directors  of 
settlements  to  giving  any  real  power  in  respect 
to  policy  to  a  house-council  consisting  of  the  res- 
idents themselves,  or  to  conceding  any  place  in 
its  direction  to  representatives  of  the  various 
neighborhood  associations  which  the  settlement 
has  called  into  being,  discloses  an  attitude  of 
patronage  inspired  by  upper-class  ideas  as  to 
the  stewardship  of  the  rich  over  the  poor. 

The  action  of  the  entire  body  of  eight 
volunteer  resident  workers  in  one  of  the  oldest 
and  most  renowned  social  settlements  in  this 
country,  in  withdrawing  from  the  house  because 

133 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

the  council  (half  of  them  Wall  Street  men  who 
never  come  near  the  house  and  little  compre- 
hend the  needs  of  the  neighborhood)  regarded 
it  as  an  act  of  insubordination  for  them  to  join 
the  settlement  society  and  elect  one  of  their  own 
number  to  the  council,  illustrates  how  those  who 
give  mere  money  arrogate  to  themselves  the  con- 
trol of  the  policy  of  the  settlement  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  those  who  give  time  and  service.  No 
wonder  that  the  social  center,  which  uses  public 
property  and  stands  for  community  self-help,  in- 
spires so  much  more  hope  than  the  social  settle- 
ment which  represents  the  spirit  of  philanthropy. 

Talk  with  a  working-man  and  he  will  tell  you : 
"To  h — 1  with  philanthropy !  I  want  not  charity, 
but  justice."  When  an  injured  working-man 
receives  compensation,  as  he  does  now,  he  can 
hold  his  head  higher  than  he  could  when  he  was 
aided  by  a  charity. 

A  wise  settlement  warden  once  declared  in  his 
report  that  a  large  part  of  the  work  at  his  settle- 
ment was  "of  a  disappearing  character."  He 
maintained  a  playground  in  the  settlement  back- 
yard just  long  enough  to  induce  the  park  com- 
mission to  establish  a  better  one  in  the  park 
across  the  street.  He  held  cooking  classes  in 

134 


PHILANTHROPY  WITH  STRINGS 

the  settlement  until  the  public  schools  put  in 
cooking.  He  provided  evening  instruction  for 
working-boys  until  the  State  put  in  a  continu- 
ation school.  He  ran  a  little  employment  office 
until  the  State  established  a  big,  well -equipped 
employment  bureau  in  his  neighborhood. 

Here  is  the  natural  and  logical  relation  of  phil- 
anthropy to  social  reform.  It  is  the  function 
of  private  philanthropy  to  pioneer,  to  experi- 
ment, to  try  out  new  things  and  new  methods, 
and  just  as  soon  as  it  has  found  the  right  way 
and  standardized  the  method  that  gives  results, 
the  time  has  come  for  the  community  to  take 
over  the  function.  This  releases  a  certain 
amount  of  private  time  and  money  to  go  on  and 
tackle  something  else.  The  means  for  initiating 
and  carrying  on  experimental  lines  of  social 
work  must  come  from  private  benevolence,  but 
the  standardized  lines  of  social  work  ought  to  be 
provided  for  by  the  community  or  the  State. 

Once  the  philanthropist  set  up  a  drinking  foun- 
tain ;  now  there  is  good  city  water  laid  on  every- 
where. In  olden  times  kind-hearted  people  pro- 
vided "ragged  schools"  for  the  waifs  of  the  al- 
leys ;  now  there  are  public  schools  for  all.  Once 
the  benevolent  created  funds  to  provide  meals 

135 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

for  indigent  prisoners  in  the  jails;  but  John 
Howard  induced  the  state  to  feed  its  prisoners. 
Time  was  when  the  defectives  were  cared  for  by 
charitable  groups;  now  the  state  provides  for 
these  unfortunates.  There  will  always  be  op- 
portunity for  private  philanthropy  to  render  sig- 
nal services;  but  a  democratic  society  with  a 
proper  spirit  of  independence  will  not  allow  it- 
self to  form  the  bad  habit  of  leaning  upon  the 
large  private  donor,  but  will  take  as  its  maxim, 
"Let  us  do  it  ourselves." 


136 


VIII 

PROHIBITION  AS  THE  SOCIOLOGIST  SEES  IT  l 
§    1 

QJ  IXTEEN  years  ago  thoughtful  Chinese  woke 
to  a  realization  of  how  the  opium  cancer 
had  eaten  into  their  vitals.  The  use  of  the  drug 
had  spread  with  truly  appalling  rapidity.  The 
Chinese  people  were  using  seventy  times  as  much 
as  they  had  used  in  1800.  Annually  twenty-two 
thousand  tons  of  opium  were  absorbed,  most  of 
it  converted  into  thick  smoke  and  inhaled  by  a 
legion  of  smokers  estimated  to  number  at  least 
twenty-five  millions.  In  the  poppy-growing 
provinces  a  shocking  proportion  of  the  adults 
were  addicted  to  the  habit.  In  the  cities  of 
Szechuan  half  the  men  and  a  fifth  of  the  women 
smoked.  In  Kansu  three  men  out  of  four  were 
devotees  of  the  pipe.  Districts  were  to  be  found 
in  which  virtually  the  whole  adult  population 
had  given  themselves  up  to  the  seduction  and 

l  Courtesy   of   "Harper's   Magazine." 

137 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

were  sinking  into  a  state  of  indescribable  leth- 
argy, misery,  and  degradation. 

Realizing  that  unless  the  people  speedily  re- 
nounced the  vice  that  was  undermining  its  man- 
hood there  was  no  hope  for  China  among  the 
nations,  the  empress  dowager  issued,  in  1906, 
the  famous  Anti-opium  Edict,  the  opening  gun 
in  the  most  extensive  warfare  on  a  destructive 
private  habit  that  the  world  has  ever  known. 
In  1910  I  traveled  for  months  through  the  far  in- 
terior of  China  and  on  every  hand  met  evidences 
of  the  resolute  fight  to  stamp  out  the  production 
of  opium.  In  many  districts  where  the  poppy 
had  been  the  staple  crop,  like  corn  in  Kansas  or 
cotton  in  Alabama,  not  a  poppy  field  was  to  be 
seen.  As  a  result,  the  local  price  of  opium  was 
from  two  to  ten  times  that  of  the  year  before, 
while  food  wras  more  plentiful  and  cheap  than 
it  had  been  for  years. 

As  week  after  week  I  traversed  the  scene  of 
conflicts,  often  fierce  and  sometimes  bloody, 
between  the  officials  supported  by  the  re- 
formers and  patriots,  and  the  poppy-growers, 
traders,  and  den-keepers  supported  feebly  by  the 
slaves  of  the  pipe,  I  reflected,  "Is  any  vice  coil- 
ing itself  about  us  whites  as  opium  coiled  itself 

138 


PROHIBITION 

about  the  Chinese?"  As  in  a  flash  I  saw  that 
alcohol  is  to  our  people  what  opium  is  to  the 
yellow  race.  And  their  experience  had  estab- 
lished that  there  are  private  drug  habits  society 
dares  not  let  alone.  For  a  very  long  time  the 
hand  of  government  had  been  withheld  in  China, 
and  if  any  principle  of  self-limitation  lurked  in 
the  opium  vice  it  ought  to  have  declared  itself 
long  before.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  opium 
smoking  did  not  confine  itself  to  fools  and  weak- 
lings. It  did  not  consume  the  chaff  and  leave  the 
wheat.  Like  a  gangrene,  it  ate  deeper  and  deeper 
into  the  social  body,  spreading  from  weak  tissue 
to  sound,  until  the  very  existence  of  the  Chinese 
race  was  at  stake. 

Moral  suasion  had  not  availed  to  arrest  the 
progress  of  the  gangrene.  It  had  been  found 
necessary  to  resort  to  heroic  treatment,  i.  e.,  to 
make  opium  inaccessible.  Might  not  our  gan- 
grene, despite  the  growth  of  temperance  senti- 
ment, go  on  eating  into  us  until  we  made  alco- 
holic beverages  inaccessible? 

Thus  China's  experience  with  the  juice  of  the 
poppy  converted  me  to  prohibition. 


139 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

§  2 

The  "dry"  movement  in  this  country  was  by  no 
means  a  fanatical  outburst  against  a  vice  already 
beaten  to  its  knees  by  half  a  century  of  temper- 
ance agitation.  What  happened  among  us  was 
that  a  part  of  American  society  turned  away 
from  liquor  while  the  rest  became  wetter  and 
wetter.  The  army  of  drinkers  which  survived 
the  temperance  simoon  of  the  forties  and  fifties 
of  the  last  century  had  been  reinforced  by  mil- 
lions of  immigrants — Irish  and  Germans  and 
Slavs — many  of  whom,  owing  to  their  relatively 
high  earnings  in  this  country,  found  themselves 
able  for  the  first  time  to  indulge  freely  in  alco- 
holic pleasures. 

Another  momentous  thing  happened — a  pro- 
found change  in  the  system  for  supplying  drink. 
The  catering  of  liquor  became  commercialized. 
It  came  to  be  a  "big  business"  intent  on  profits 
— always  more  profits.  From  being  shrinking 
and  apologetic,  it  became  brazen  and  aggressive. 
It  no  longer  pleaded  humbly  for  leave  to  assuage 
existing  thirsts.  In  order  to  "promote  busi- 
ness" it  deliberately  and  methodically  set  itself 
to  create  new  thirsts.  It  advertised,  gave  away 

140 


PROHIBITION 

samples,  subsidized  convivial  organizations,  en- 
couraged festal  customs,  of  a  "damp"  character, 
planted  saloons  in  new  places,  and  brought  them 
into  close  partnership  with  the  great  social 
plagues,  gambling  and  prostitution.  In  olden 
time  alcoholic  beverages  were  no  more  "pushed" 
than  hen's  eggs  are  "pushed."  But  as  production 
and  distribution  were  centralized,  the  business 
grew  more  capitalistic,  the  saloon-keeper  came 
to  be  the  brewer's  man,  while  systematic  efforts 
were  made  to  "shove"  liquor,  especially  beer. 
Between  1880  and  1907  the  annual  per  capita 
consumption  of  all  liquors  in  this  country  rose 
from  ten  gallons  to  nearly  twenty-three  gallons! 
Far,  then,  from  being  a  superfluous  stroke  at  a 
dying  social  custom,  prohibition  was  an  urgent 
social-defense  measure  forced  by  greedy  liquor 
interests  which  were  so  short-sighted  that  they 
would  not  leave  non-drinkers  alone.  Continu- 
ally they  plotted  to  tempt  the  public  into  a  larger 
consumption.  Their  ambition  seemed  to  be  to 
convert  the  rising  generation  of  males  into  per- 
ipatetic tanks. 

A  long  and  variegated  experience  with  at- 
tempts to  regulate  the  liquor  traffic  showed  that 
it  was  incapable  of  being  made  decent  and  law- 

141 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

abiding.  It  would  respect  no  law,  heed  no  warn- 
ings or  protests.  Always  it  was  secretly  dig- 
ging under  or  insolently  breaking  over  any 
bounds  the  community  set  to  it.  So,  not  out 
of  a  sour  resentment  of  other  people's  pleasures, 
but  out  of  bitter  experience  with  an  unmiti- 
gated social  evil,  grew  the  sentiment  for  destroy- 
ing it,  "root  and  branch."  When  parents  and 
other  earnest  people  realized  that  here  was  a  sin- 
ister thing  doing  its  utmost  to  ensnare  our  boys 
and  ravel  out  the  fabric  of  sound  principles  and 
good  resolutions  which  home  and  school  and 
church  had  been  at  such  pains  to  weave  into  the 
soul  of  youth,  they  hardened  their  hearts  and 
struck  it  down. 


Certain  unforeseen  developments  have  caused 
prohibition  to  triumph  sooner  than  one  had  a 
right  to  expect.  In  the  early  crusade  against 
alcoholism  what  was  deplored  was  the  intemper- 
ate use  of  intoxicants.  The  "temperate"  user 
was  the  model.  Later,  total  abstinence  was 
urged,  on  the  ground  that  the  moderate  drinker 
sets  a  bad  example  to  the  weak  and,  moreover, 

142 


PROHIBITION 

runs  the  risk  of  being  overpowered  by  his  habit 
and  swept  into  the  abyss  of  excess.  But  thirty 
years  ago  evidence  began  to  pour  out  of  Euro- 
pean physiological  and  psychological  labora- 
tories that  even  in  small  quantities  alcohol  is  an 
upscttcr  and  dcrangcr  of  the  functions  of  the 
mind  as  tocll  a$  of  the  body.  The  sense  of  re- 
lease and  augmented  power  that  comes  with  a 
glass  or  two  was  proved  a  cheat  and  a  delusion. 
To  his  horror,  that  darling  of  the  early  moralists, 
the  moderate  drinker,  was  pulled  from  his  ped- 
estal and  pilloried  as  an  ignorant  self-poisoner. 
Then  the  development  of  industry  came  to  help 
the  besiegers  of  the  fort  of  folly.  The  traveling 
public  began  to  be  nervous  about  the  drinker  at 
the  engine-throttle,  the  telegraph-key,  the  switch- 
board. The  factory  system  supplanted  the 
handicrafts,  and  a  new  class*  the  employers, 
came  to  realize  how  drink  plays  havoc  with  pro- 
duction. As  workers  became  machine  tenders 
the  damage  from  the  liquor  habit  in  impairment 
of  efficiency  and  in  injury  to  delicate  and  costly 
machinery  became  ever"  more  unmistakable. 
More  and  more  employers  came  to  look  upon  pro- 
hibition as  a  labor-efficiency  policy,  and  it  was 

143 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

largely  these  men  who  financed  the  movement 
which  brought  the  liquor  interests  to  grief,  de- 
spite their  millions  for  propaganda. 

The  World  War  was  the  crowning  disaster  to 
John  Barleycorn.  In  the  interest  of  military 
efficiency  and  as  a  food-conservation  measure  all 
the  belligerent  governments  set  clamps  on  liquor. 
This  staging  of  drink  as  an  economic  drain  and 
the  foe  of  national  strength  has  been  an  illum- 
inating object-lesson  to  thoughtless  millions.  In 
the  face  of  the  whole  world  King  Gambrinus  has 
been  shamed  and  set  at  naught,  so  that  the  out- 
lawing of  the  drink  traffic  by  the  governments, 
as  already  the  opium  traffic  has  been  outlawed, 
appears  to  be  only  a  question  of  time. 


Broadly  seen,  prohibition  is  the  device  of  the 
young  northern  peoples  to  overcome  their  con- 
stitutional handicap  in  competing  with  the  older 
and  soberer  races.  It  seems  as  if  all  varieties  of 
men  at  their  first  contact  with  intoxicants  liter- 
ally go  crazy  over  them.  In  vinous  exaltation 
the  primitive  races  especially  find  the  most  glor- 
ious experience  of  life.  To  supply  a  tribe  of  Es- 

144 


PROHIBITION 

kimos  or  Australian  blacks  with  plenty  of  strong 
drink  proved  to  be  a  swift  way  of  despatching 
them.  The  infatuation  of  the  American  Indian 
for  "fire-water"  has  been  proverbial.  The  affin- 
ity of  the  indigenous  population  of  Mexico 
for  puJquc  and  mescal  is  notorious.  All  down  the 
Andean  uplift  the  natives  are  gradually  destroy- 
ing themselves  with  chicJia  and  pisco.  The  "un- 
conquerable''Araucanians  were  in  the  end  bowled 
over  by  the  product  of  distilleries  planted  among 
them  for  that  very  purpose.  The  worst  alcohol- 
ism in  the  world  to-day  is  among  the  Chilean 
masses,  who  are  more  than  half  Indian. 

Once  a  people  has  easy  access  to  what  an  Irish 
poet,  who  sang  a  thousand  years  ago,  called  "the 
heavenly  dew,"  it  begins  to  undergo  "alcoholic 
selection."  Those  to  whom  the  delights  of  intox- 
ication are  irresistible  sooner  or  later  drink 
themselves  to  death  or,  at  any  rate,  leave  a 
weakened  progeny  which  quickly  perish.  Con- 
versely, the  sober  survive  and  they  transmit  to 
their  posterity  their  distaste  for  vinous  exhil- 
aration. Some  of  the  Mediterranean  peoples 
have  known  the  vine  for  four  or  five  thousand 
years,  so  that  long  ago  those  among  them  who 

145 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

could  not  refrain  from  abusing  the  "blood  of  the 
grape"  eliminated  themselves.  Sooner  or  later 
their  intemperate  stocks  ran  out,  the  result  being 
that  the  sobriety  of  these  peoples  is  the  marvel  of 
the  later  arrivals  at  the  banquet  of  civilization. 
Alcoholic  selection  no  doubt  set  in  among  the 
nomad  Israelites  with  their  settlement  in  the 
Promised  Land.  It  was  sure  to  come  when  every 
man  dwelt  "under  his  own  vine  and  fig-tree." 
Naturally,  therefore,  the  Old  Testament  abounds 
in  warnings  against  wine,  but  not  the  New  Testa- 
ment, for  by  then  the  Jews  had  become  the 
liquor-proof  people  which  we  find  them  to-day. 

The  early  Greek  lawgivers  struck  at  drunken- 
ness with  a  severity  we  have  never  touched.  Al- 
exander's Greeks  were  so  bibulous  that  in  one  of 
the  wine-drinking  matches  which  he  encouraged 
thirty-six  contestants  died  from  over-drinking. 
Yet  in  a  few  centuries  alcoholics  were  nearly  ex- 
tinct among  the  Hellenes,  while  the  modern 
Greeks  are  models  of  sobriety. 

Having  never  been  exposed  to  the  test  of  the 
flowing  bowl,  the  early  Teutons  were  terrible  was- 
sailers.  Tacitus  remarks,  "Intemperance  proves 
as  effectual  in  subduing  them  as  the  force  of 

146 


PROHIBITION 

arms."  But  in  the  course  of  the  Dark  Ages  the 
monasteries  spread  the  cultivation  of  the  vine 
over  the  slopes  of  southern  Germany,  so  that  all 
through  the  Middle  Ages  their  furious  drinkers 
were  quaffing  themselves  to  destruction.  This 
is  why  to-day  the  Germans  occupy  in  respect  to 
alcoholism  a  middle  place  between  northern  and 
southern  peoples.  An  analysis  of  2075  charity 
cases  in  our  cities  showed  that  drink  as  the 
cause  of  poverty  occurs  but  half  as  often  among 
the  German  cases  as  among  the  Irish,  and  two 
thirds  as  often  as  among  native  American  cases. 
Among  the  foreign-bora  in  our  jails  and  prisons 
only  one  German  in  twenty-two  was  committed 
for  intoxication  as  against  one  out  of  three  Irish, 
one  out  of  five  Scotch,  and  one  out  of  eight 
Scandinavians. 

How  amazing  is  the  contrast  between  races  in 
their  constitutional  craving  to  be  "lit  up"  comes 
out  very  clearly  in  the  records  of  the  charity  hos- 
pitals of  New  York.  Liquor  is  responsible  for 
more  than  a  fifth  of  the  cases  treated.  It  is  the 
root  of  the  trouble  in  a  quarter  of  the  native 
Americans  treated,  in  a  third  of  the  Irish  pa- 
tients, and  in  two  fifths  of  the  native-born  of  Irish 

147 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

fathers.  On  the  other  hand,  one  out  of  sixty 
Italian  patients,  one  out  of  seventy  Magyar  pa- 
tients, one  out  of  eighty  Polish  patients,  and  one 
out  of  a  hundred  Hebrew  patients  is  in  the  hos- 
pital on  account  of  inebriety ! 

Or  take  the  sons  of  the  "land  of  the  vine." 
The  proportion  of  Italian  charity  cases  charge- 
able to  drink  is  only  a  sixth  of  that  for  foreign- 
born  cases  and  a  seventh  of  that  for  cases  among 
native  Americans.  Alcoholism  is  found  among 
the  Italians  in  the  charity  hospitals  from  a  tenth 
to  a  twentieth  as  often  as  among  north-European 
patients  in  the  same  institutions. 

From  the  hygienic  point  of  view  it  is  a  great 
pity  that  the  people  of  this  country  are  over- 
whelmingly of  northern  extraction.  It  is  cer- 
tain that  there  would  be  no  liquor  problem  here, 
ergo  no  prohibition,  if  sober  Neapolitans  had 
landed  on  Plymouth  Kock,  if  abstinent  Portu- 
guese had  settled  Virginia  instead  of  hard-drink- 
ing English,  if  temperate  Wallachians  had 
planted  themselves  in  Pennsylvania  instead  of 
thirsty  Germans  and  Scotch-Irish,  if  coffee-sip- 
ping Turks  had  peopled  the  West  instead  of  bib- 
ulous Hibernians  and  Scandinavians.  Had  we 

148 


PROHIBITION 

Americans  only  the  anti-alcoholic  inheritance  of 
Cretans,  Syrians,  and  Armenians,  we  might 
dispense  with  "restrictions  on  personal  lib- 
erty." 

But,  being  what  we  are,  there  are  open  to  us 
just  two  solutions  of  the  drink  problem.  Stoi- 
cally we  may  submit  ourselves  to  alcoholic  se- 
lection— a  process  in  our  case  made  trebly  dev- 
astating by  the  modern  cheapness  of  manufac- 
ture of  alcoholic  beverages  and  the  facilities  for 
keeping  them  at  every  man's  elbow  all  the  time. 
In  anguish  we  may  endure  the  loss  of  perhaps 
a  million  lives  a  decade  from  intemperance  as 
result  of  the  hurricane  of  temptation  the  un- 
curbed liquor  interests  would  let  loose  upon  us. 
With  aching  hearts  we  may  tolerate  the  wreck- 
ing of  perhaps  half  a  million  homes  in  the  same 
period.  We  may  steel  ourselves  while  myriads 
of  wives  and  mothers  have  their  lives  poisoned 
by  worry  lest  some  of  their  dear  ones  fall  a  prey 
to  the  insidious  drug.  Well,  the  reward  for  con- 
sistently keeping  our  hands  off  the  agent  of 
havoc  would  be  that  by  the  end  of  this  century 
we  should  have  passed  the  peak  of  our  suffering 
and  by  the  year  2100  A.  D.  our  descendants  might 

149 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

be  as  constitutionally  resistant  to  alcoholic  be- 
guilement  as  are  the  Portuguese  to-day! 

The  alternative  to  this  dismal  prospect  is  pro- 
hibition— i.  e.,  wringing  the  neck  of  the  liquor 
business  so  that  our  unfortunate  temptables,  no 
longer  teased  and  baited  and  snared  for  the 
sake  of  the  profit  to  be  extracted  from  their 
weakness  for  alcohol,  will  be  left  free  to  pur- 
sue the  normal  interests  of  life. 

What  social  effects — other  than  the  lessening 
of  crime  and  pauperism,  which  are  too  obvious 
to  be  worth  discussing — may  be  anticipated 
from  the  banishment  of  strong  drink? 

For  one  thing,  it  is  bound  to  improve  the 
position  of  women,  especially  in  the  lower  levels 
of  society.  Liquor  has  been  the  great  enemy  of 
the  abstinent  sex.  No  thoughtful  woman  finds 
anything  captivating  in  a  drinking  song  or  takes 
"John  Barleycorn"  as  a  joke.  Usually  deep 
potations  let  loose  the  satyr  in  man  and  put 
attractive  women  at  the  mercy  of  lust  coupled 
with  superior  physical  strength.  The  female 
vampire,  of  course,  will  lose  one  of  her  means 
of  making  infatuated  males  submit  to  her  blood- 
sucking; but  decent  women,  who  have  to  trust 
their  brains  and  character  to  command  from  the 

150 


PROHIBITION 

more  muscular  sex  the  respect  to  which  they 
feel  entitled,  know  that  their  moral  and  intel- 
lectual merits  are  never  at  greater  discount 
than  in  the  eyes  of  intoxicated  men. 

If  we  succeed  in  making  an  end  of  toping 
there  will  be  one  stone  the  less  in  the  way  of 
Cupid's  car.  Machine  industry  and  certain  other 
economic  developments,  by  opening  to  the  weaker 
sex  countless  opportunities  of  self-support,  have 
relieved  capable  young  women  of  the  economic 
necessity  of  marriage.  Working-girls  now  scoff 
at  taking  husbands  "for  the  sake  of  a  meal- 
ticket,"  and  are  more  inclined  to  consider 
whether  life  with  the  wooer  opens  a  prospect  of 
happiness.  With  the  spread  of  this  critical  at- 
titude toward  marriage  no  doubt  there  must  be 
a  growing  number  of  young  women  who  remain 
single  rather  than  tie  themselves  to  a  man  whose 
drinking  habits  arouse  their  distrust.  So  far  as 
this  is  the  case,  the  change  we  may  look  for  in 
social  customs  ought  to  promote  matrimony  by 
increasing  the  number  of  eligible  young  men 
and  diminishing  the  risks  of  the  self-supporting 
girl  who  marries. 

In  prohibition  the  home  scores  a  signal  tri- 
umph. It  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge 

151 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

that  among  the  masses  in  Europe  the  sexes  have 
never  gone  asunder  in  their  pastimes  to  the  ex- 
tent that  they  have  in  our  wage-earning  popu- 
lation. Among  us  the  taboo  on  woman's  shar- 
ing of  vinous  delights  (which  came  to  be  con- 
sidered the  exclusive  prerogative  of  the  male)  set 
up  as  counter-attraction  to  the  home  the  male 
drinking  resort,  in  which,  unlike  the  German 
biergarten  and  the  English  "public  house,"  a 
decent  woman  was  never  to  be  seen. 

Thereupon  began  a  silent  but  determined 
duel  between  the  American  wife,  seeking  to 
retain  the  companionship  of  her  mate  and  have 
his  cooperation  in  rearing  their  children,  and 
the  keeper  of  the  male  resort  on  the  lookout  for 
profitable  patrons.  The  wife  lured  her  husband, 
and  later  her  sons,  with  the  comforts  and  charms 
of  home — rugs  and  curtains,  the  easy-chair,  the 
trimmed  lamp,  games,  books,  music,  and  the 
society  of  good  women.  The  saloon-keeper 
lured  with  bright  lights,  the  shining  bar,  the 
brass  rail,  glistening  glass,  huge  mirrors,  sensual 
paintings,  privacy  for  "a  quiet  game,"  and 
(sometimes)  the  society  of  loose  women. 

The  duel  went  on  with  varying  fortunes.  It 
152 


PROHIBITION 

turned  out  that  in  most  cases  the  American 
women  of  the  "middle"  class  had  the  time,  means, 
and  ingenuity  to  create  for  their  men  a  domestic 
environment  which  possessed  greater  attrac- 
tiveness than  the  male  drinking  resort.  Among 
wage-earners,  however,  overcrowding,  poverty, 
and  want  of  knowledge  too  often  thwarted  the 
wife's  pathetic  endeavor  to  tempt  her  man  to 
spend  his  time  and  money  in  the  home  rather 
than  in  the  saloon.  Now,  happily,  prohibition 
comes  to  the  assistance  of  this  much-enduring 
woman  and  opens  to  her  the  means  to  build  a 
home  which  will  give  her  and  her  daughters  an 
opportunity  to  exert  a  refining  influence  upon 
the  coarser  natures  of  her  menfolk. 

Says  a  report  from  Richmond:  "Hundreds 
of  men  are  taking  the  pay  envelope  home  now 
and  spending  their  evenings  there,  men  who 
had  not  done  so  before  in  twenty  years.  With- 
out doubt,  one  of  the  first  things  that  drinking 
men  do  when  the  saloon  is  no  longer  open  to 
them  is  to  move  back  into  their  homes,  and  then 
to  move  themselves  and  their  families  into  bet- 
ter homes."  In  Denver  the  gas  company  found 
that  under  prohibition,  despite  the  shutting 

153 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

down  of  the  saloons,  its  business  steadily  in- 
creased because  more  gas  was  being  used  in  the 
homes. 

When  one  wearies  of  the  home  it  is  now  not 
the  male  resort — pool-room,  men's  club,  coffee- 
house, or  other  "substitute  for  the  saloon" — 
that  is  likely  to  be  visited,  but  rather  some  rec- 
reation place  which  men  and  women,  parents 
and  children,  can  enjoy  together.  It  will  be 
the  park,  the  "zoo"  the  soda-fountain,  the 
motion-film  theater,  or  the  social  center.  With 
the  ending  of  the  sociability  institution  built 
up  about  the  absorption  of  alcohol  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  are  encouraged  to  have  more 
of  their  pleasures  in  common. 

Not  only  is  there  prospect  of  women  enjoy- 
ing greater  consideration  and  influence  with 
men,  but  with  prohibition  a  vista  of  hope  is 
opened  for  multitudes  of  hapless  children.  Since 
their  security  lies  primarily  in  their  unconscious 
appeal  to  the  tender  instinct  and  to  the  sense 
of  obligation,  children  suffer  the  most  from  the 
drinking  habits  of  the  bread-winner.  Liquor 
soon  blunts  the  parental  sense  of  obligation, 
while,  by  setting  aside  ordinary  every-day  in- 
hibitions, it  opens  a  freer  course  to  the  instincts. 

154 


This  unbridling  of  the  primitive  self  seems  to 
favor  the  more  elemental  instincts,  such  as  pug- 
nacity, lust,  and  self-assertion.  In  general, 
the  man  under  the  influence  of  liquor  tramples 
brutally  upon  the  rights  and  claims  of  his  chil- 
dren. Occasionally  a  man  is  actually  more  gen- 
erous and  tender  in  his  cups  than  when  sober, 
but  the  rule  is  the  other  way.  Now  that,  on  top 
of  free  public  education  and  the  banning  of 
child  labor,  the  saloon-keeper's  till  will  no  longer 
jingle  with  the  money  which  should  feed  and 
clothe  the  wage-earner's  children,  we  may  look 
for  a  generation  of  young  people  virtually  all 
of  whom  will  have  had  their  chance. 

Those  in  whom  the  glass  is  wedded  to  good 
fellowship  and  good  fellowship  is  wedded  to  the 
glass  will  have  trouble  in  finding  new  means  of 
bridging  the  gulf  that  has  resulted.  Still,  sub- 
stitute thawers  will  be  found,  for  nobody  has 
ever  pretended  that,  on  the  whole,  abstainers 
are  less  sympathetic  and  brotherly,  more  self- 
centered  and  shut  up  within  themselves,  than 
drinkers.  If  it  requires  potations  to  set  up  a 
genial  current  of  feeling,  how  hedged  and  lone- 
some must  be  the  Rumanian,  the  Arab,  the  Gipsy, 
the  Syrian!  And,  on  the  other  hand,  what  a 

155 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

loving  expansive  wight  the  Russian,  the  Nor- 
wegian, the  Scot  must  have  been  half  a  cent-ury 
ago,  before  the  desiccation  of  northern  Europe 
began ! 

The  fact  is,  whatever  social  custom  bids  men 
do  together  in  token  of  friendliness  will  pres- 
ently become  charged  with  significance  and  set 
up  a  flow  of  good  feeling  between  the  partici- 
pants. To  "get  next,"  Near-Easterners  drink 
coffee,  while  Far-Easterners  drink  tea.  Our  an- 
cestors hit  upon  the  custom  of  touching  glasses 
and  swallowing  beverages  of  high  alcoholic  con- 
tent. There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  sip- 
ping "soft"  drinks  together,  or  smoking  together, 
or  playing  backgammon  together  might  not 
serve  equally  well  as  a  symbol  of  amity. 

Then,  too,  much  of  the  crude,  maudlin  gre- 
gariousness  that  comes  after  the  third  glass  is 
a  temporary,  deceptive  thing — fool's  gold.  You 
can't  build  anything  on  it.  Is  there  any  con- 
tinuing good  work — Red  Cross  or  Belgian  re- 
lief, or  the  reclamation  of  the  "down  and  out" 
— which  has  relied  on  the  social  feeling  evoked 
by  alcoholic  drink? 

The  wine-cup  has  played  a  part  in  relieving 
ennui,  banishing  care,  and  helping  men  forget 

156 


PROHIBITION 

their  troubles.  Many  of  long-established  habits 
will  therefore  be  hard  put  to  it  to  open  fresh 
sources  of  solace  and  inspiration.  Still,  such 
sources  will  be  found,  let  no  one  doubt  it.  In 
Kansas  a  generation  has  grown  up  without  re- 
course to  liquor,  and  one  hears  more  young  peo- 
ple singing  of  an  evening  in  a  Kansas  town  than 
one  hears  in  the  lands  of  the  vine.  In  the  eigh- 
teenth century  much  hard  toping  went  on  amqng 
American  college  students.  The  custom  has 
passed  away,  but  in  its  place  have  sprung  up 
many  varieties  of  "high  jinks"  unknown  to  the 
college  of  olden  time — "rushes"  and  "hops," 
"song  fests"  and  "circuses,"  athletic  "meets"  and 
foot-ball  "rallies."  With  wassail  or  without,  the 
spirit  of  youth  will  sparkle  and  foam. 

In  all  previous  wars  it  has  been  considered 
inevitable  that  men  removed  from  home  and 
exposed  to  the  frightful  boredom  of  barracks 
and  camp  and  trenches  should  drink  in  order  to 
brighten  a  black  existence.  One  of  the  most 
glowing  chapters  in  the  history  of  the  World  War 
will  be  the  story  of  the  successful  efforts  to  pro- 
vide for  the  social  recreation  of  our  soldiers  over- 
seas and  in  the  training-camps.  A  really  mar- 
velous ingenuity  and  insight  into  human  nature 

157 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

has  been  shown  by  the  religious  agencies  work- 
ing to  supply  our  soldiers  at  home  and  abroad 
with  recreation  which  will  banish  tedium  and 
outpull  the  allurements  of  vice.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that  the  problem  of  satisfying  the 
social  instinct  of  segregated  men  without  the 
aid  of  intoxicants  has  been  solved  and — we  may 
be  proud  of  the  fact — solved  by  Americans ! 

That  the  closing  of  the  saloon  will  go  a  long 
way  toward  purifying  politics  nobody  will  deny. 
The  wholesale  use  of  free  drinks  to  sway  the 
electorate  is  one  of  the  blackest  chapters  in  the 
history  of  political  democracy.  The  defenders 
of  governing  dynasties  and  classes  love  to  point 
to  the  role  of  liquor  in  the  selections  which  reg- 
ister the  will  of  the  "sovereign  people."  Long 
before  any  other  curb  was  imposed  on  the  liquor 
sellers,  the  American  commonwealths  closed  the 
saloons  on  election  day  in  order  to  prevent 
scandalous  scenes  of  orgy  and  riot  about  the 
polling  booths.  Money  will  continue  to  be  used 
illegitimately  in  politics,  and  under  prohibition 
men  will  be  found  who  will  sell  their  votes. 
But  it  is  safe  to  predict  that  fewer  votes  will 
be  corruptly  swayed  and  that  they  will  never 
again  be  sold  at  such  bargain  prices  as  in  the 

158 


PROHIBITION 

days  when  no  limit  was  imposed  on  the  role  of 
liquor  in  politics. 

Since  it  has  been  the  element  with  the  fewest 
wholesome  pleasures  and  recreations,  the  wage- 
earners  rather  than  the  business  men,  the  pro- 
fessional men,  or  the  leisure  class,  which  ha*» 
been  hardest  hit  by  alcoholism,  we  may  antic- 
ipate 'that  the  banishing  of  strong  drink  will 
result  in  accelerating  the  economic  and  political 
advance  of  labor.  The  free  drinkers  among  the 
wage-earners  have  furnished  few  resolute  or  in- 
telligent fighters  for  the  working-men's  cause. 
They  have  been  so  many  weak  spots  in  labor's 
phalanx.  In  a  dry  society  it  will  be  harder  to 
fuddle  and  befool  the  worker  into  voting  for 
policies  which  are  in  the  interest  of  another 
class  and  against  the  advancement  of  his  own 
class. 

One  of  the  great  surprises  of  Soviet  Russia 
has  been  that  it  has  not  dissolved  in  chaos. 
Contrary  to  what  we  expected,  the  "man  on 
horseback"  has  not  taken  charge  and  the  Rus- 
sians do  not  think  he  is  coming.  That  a  workers- 
and-peasants'  regime  did  not  result  in  anarchy 
leading  to  a  military  dictatorship  is  largely 
owing  to  the  heavy  hand  the  leaders  laid  on 

159 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

liquor.  Warned  by  the  scenes  of  demoraliza- 
tion which  followed  access  of  the  Red  Guard  to 
the  wine-cellars  of  the  Winter  Palace,  the  kom- 
missars  went  about  to  destroy  the  numerous 
hidden  stocks  stored  for  the  refreshment  of  the 
Petrograd  well-to-do.  In  December,  1917,  I 
beheld  sights  which  would  have  cheered  the 
heart  of  the  royal  author  of  the  proverb,  "Wine 
is  a  mocker."  I  saw  men  in  wrecked  wine-cel- 
lars wading  up  to  their  ankles  in  the  ruddy 
liquid  and  the  snow  of  a  street  stained  rich  red 
where  fire-hose  was  draining  the  contents  of  the 
cellars  into  the  sewers.  Here,  perhaps,  is  the 
secret  of  why  the  Russian  proletarian  revolu- 
tion has  not  followed  the  course  which  history 
led  us  to  expect. 


160 


IX 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION  FROM  THE  SOCIAL 
POINT  OF  VIEW 

rjlHERE  is  a  world  of  difference  between  call- 
*•  ing  a  man  a  "good"  lawyer  and  calling  him 
a  "good"  bacteriologist  or  health  officer.  In  the 
one  case  the  man  is  appraised  from  the  private 
point  of  view,  in  the  other  from  the  public  point 
of  view.  Winning  cases  is  not  social  service; 
it  is  social  service  to  help  justice  prevail  and  to 
make  the  law  respected.  The  "good"  lawyer 
like  as  not  aids  the  wrong  cause  as  often  as  he 
aids  the  right ;  oftener,  in  fact,  for  owing  to  his 
reputation  for  winning  "hard"  cases  his  talents 
will  be  sought  by  litigants  who  have  the  least  to 
say  for  themselves.  It  used  to  be  said  of  the 
leading  criminal  lawyer  of  Massachusetts  that 
no  crook  undertook  a  serious  crime  in  that  State 
without  first  inquiring  as  to  the  health  of  Rufus 
Choate.  The  "good"  health  officer,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  "good"  from  the  community  point  of 

161 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

view,  not  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  litigant  with 
a  weak  case  or  a  law-breaker  facing  trial. 

Lawyers  are  experts  as  to  legal  rights,  so  there 
is  no  place  for  them  in  a  despotic  society.  They 
flourish  only  under  free  government  and  are 
justly  proud  of  the  fact  that  the  bar  unanimously 
offers  resistance  to  any  tendency  to  arbitrary 
rule.  This,  however,  constitutes  no  sweeping 
certificate  of  merit  for  the  legal  profession.  The 
oft-lauded  services  it  renders  to  society  are  real, 
but  so  are  its  disservices,  which  it  is  careful 
never  to  mention. 

Subject,  of  course,  to  the  restrictions  of  the 
professional  code,  lawyers  generally  practise 
law  for  gain.  Usually  the  litigant  with  the 
more  money  to  spend  on  his  case  will  command 
the  services  of  the  abler  lawyers,  i.  e.,  those  who 
have  the  reputation  of  winning  cases.  The 
wrong  decisions  these  lawyers  are  able  to  bring 
about  when  pitted  against  w^eak  or  inexperienced 
opponents  become  precedents  quoted  in  future 
lawsuits.  Thus,  under  the  system  of  judge- 
made  law,  the  legal  rights  of  the  financially 
weaker  class  of  litigants  are  continually  nib- 
bled away,  while  the  class  confronting  them 
accumulates  unfair  advantage.  As  on  the  foot- 

162 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION 

ball  field  the  team  with  the  better  interference 
gains  ground  from  the  other  team,  so  in  the 
struggle  between  opposed  classes  the  high-priced 
astute  lawyers  constitute  the  "interference"  for 
the  side  with  the  more  money  to  spend.  The 
doctrine  of  the  assumption  of  risk  could  never 
have  reached  its  concluding  stage  of  monstrosity 
but  for  the  inequality  of  pressure  applied  to  it 
from  opposite  sides. 

When  the  balance  of  rights  has  been  so  dis- 
turbed that  the  weaker  class  regularly  gets  the 
worst  of  it  in  court,  a  political  struggle  for  re- 
dress breaks  out.  But  once  the  legislature  has 
been  moved  to  enact  a  statute  setting  back  the 
stakes  to  the  old  line,  the  ingenious  lawyers  of 
the  interest  affected  proceed  by  clever  sophis- 
tries and  hair-splittings  to  befuddle  the  judges 
until  they  have  whittled  the  statute  down  to  the 
vanishing-point. 

Aside,  then,  from  bringing  about  the  triumph 
of  injustice  in  particular  adjudicated  cases,  the 
practice  of  lawyers  following  the  bigger  re- 
tainer contributes  to  destroy  the  equilibrium  of 
classes  by  aiding  the  rich  and  concentrated  in- 
terest to  encroach  upon  the  one  that  is  poor  or 
scattered. 

163 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

Until  the  establishment  of  railroad  and  public 
utility  commissions,  the  rights  of  railway  pas- 
sengers, gas  consumers,  and  telephone  users 
were  being  nibbled  away  by  just  this  inequality 
in  litigation.  In  such  relations  as  between 
merchant  and  customer,  master  and  seaman, 
master  and  servant,  the  cumulative  effects  of  the 
one  side's  commanding  always  the  better  law- 
yers have  been  serious,  nay  even  disastrous. 
One  motive  in  the  creation  on  all  hands  of  pure 
food  commissions,  trade  commissions,  and  in- 
dustrial commissions  has  been  to  correct  the 
dangerous  list  resulting  from  the  gravitating  of 
legal  ability  to  the  side  with  the  larger  purse. 
Before  these  tribunals  of  experts,  making  up 
their  minds  not  on  ordinary  court-room  testi- 
mony but  on  the  findings  of  trained  investigators, 
the  power  of  the  lawyer  to  affect  the  decision  is 
so  circumscribed  as  to  threaten  his  eventual 
elimination. 

A  visitor  from  Mars  would  be  amazed  that  an 
adroit  lawyer  who  has  amassed  a  fortune  help- 
ing corporations  to  enrich  themselves  at  the 
expense  of  the  public  should  ever  have  the  effront- 
ery to  seek  political  favors  at  the  hands  of  his 
fellow-citizens.  Stranger  yet,  the  voters  some- 

164 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION 

times  make  such  a  man  governor  or  senator 
under  the  impression  that  they  are  getting  a 
"smart"  man's  services  for  a  tithe  of  their  com- 
mercial value.  Of  course,  in  such  cases  the 
voters  make  a  bad  bargain.  Men  do  not  gather 
figs  from  thistles,  secure  the  best  social  service 
from  the  hardened  private  servant.  The  corpo- 
ration "counsel"  who  late  in  life  takes  on  the 
public  as  his  client  may  mean  well  by  his  new 
client,  but  he  is  usually  incapable  of  perceiving 
the  public  interest  at  points  where  it  clashes  with 
the  private  interests  he  has  been  accustomed  to 
champion. 

Voters  would  never  do  such  foolish  things  had 
they  not  been  steadily  plied  with  the  false  doc- 
trine that  the  bar  in  toto  is  the  bulwark  of  pop- 
ular rights,  and  that  the  lawyer  who  consist- 
ently serves  the  private  interest  which  offers 
him  the  most  money  is  in  some  mysterious  way 
rendering  a  public  service.  The  truth  is,  of 
course,  that  this  type  of  attorney  is  to  the  faith- 
ful defender  of  the  actual  legal  rights  of  his 
client  what  the  hired  gunman  is  to  the  loyal  po- 
liceman, what  the  professional  expert  witness  is 
to  the  genuine  chemist  or  alienist.  In  the  light 
of  healthy  common  sense,  the  lawyer  who  hires 

165 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

himself  without  conviction  is  no  more  respect- 
able than  the  woman  who  hires  herself  without 
love. 

The  doubtfulness  of  the  legal  profession  from 
the  social  point  of  view  comes  out  clearly  when 
one  compares  it  with  other  professions.  Engi- 
neers do  not  pit  their  science  and  ingenuity 
against  one  another  but  against  nature.  Phys- 
icians are  not  thrusting  against  each  other  but 
against  disease.  Teachers  combat  not  other 
teachers  but  ignorance.  These  serve  society  by 
serving  private  interests  which  are  harmonious 
with,  the  public  interest.  But  half,  perhaps 
even  three  fourths,  of  the  learning,  logic,  labor, 
and  ingenuity  of  the  legal  profession,  probably 
the  best  manned  of  them  all,  is  wasted  in  blow 
and  parry,  thrust  and  counter-thrust.  Only  a 
fraction  of  the  labors  of  lawyers  actually  serves 
society  by  drawing  out  the  truth,  clearing  up 
situations,  clarifying  rights,  and  developing  law 
in  the  direction  of  social  need. 

The  waste  of  lawyers'  efforts  through  forensic 
contention  is  like  that  of  competing  advertising 
experts — only  the  public  have  never  perceived 
it  as  they  perceive  the  waste  of  advertising.  The 
latter  is  so  evident  that  its  service  in  stimulat- 

166 


THE  LEGAL  PROFESSION 

ing  and  educating  consumers  to  avail  themselves 
of  new  utilities  is  overlooked.  There  is  some- 
thing pathetic  in  the  plea  of  "ad  men"  to  be 
taken  seriously  by  a  public  too  likely  to  regard 
them  as  nothing  but  artists  in  convincing  men- 
dacity. No  doubt  their  coming  together  to  raise 
ethical  standards  for  their  work  and  cast  out  the 
liars  will  in  time  gain  them  that  standing  with 
the  public  which  they  deserve. 

Of  the  intellectual  eminence  of  the  legal  pro- 
fession there  can  be  no  question.  So  alluring 
are  forensic  triumphs,  so  rich  the  rewards  of 
success,  that  when  in  my  classes  I  detect  an  un- 
usually brilliant  student  and,  in  the  hope  of  steer- 
ing him  into  creative  scholarship,  ask  him  what 
he  intends  to  do,  it  is  almost  a  foregone  conclu- 
sion that  he  will  reply  he  intends  going  into  the 
law.  The  close  relation  of  the  law  to  politics, 
arising  in  part  from  the  ease  with  which  the  prac- 
tice of  law  can  be  dropped  and  resumed  after  a 
period  of  public  life,  lends  it  an  added  attrac- 
tiveness in  the  eyes  of  ambitious  young  men. 

Intellectually,  too,  the  lawyer  keeps  himself  re- 
markably fit.  Pitted  always  against  opponents 
who  pounce  with  joy  upon  every  loose  statement 
of  his,  every  flaw  of  reasoning,  every  awkward 

167 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

use  of  citation  or  evidence,  lie  is  required  always 
to  keep  himself  in  training  like  an  athlete.  The 
preacher  becomes  soft  from  preaching  to  those 
who  will  never  take  him  to  task  for  the  holes  in 
his  logic.  The  teacher  becomes  oracular  and 
enervated  from  continually  handing  down  his 
ideas  to  immature  minds  unable  to  confute  him. 
The  editor  grows  flabby  who  can  take  his  time 
about  replying  to  criticism.  The  lawyer,  on  the 
other  hand,  has  to  keep  hard  his  intellectual 
thews,  for  his  success  hinges  on  his  constant 
readiness  to  put  up  a  good  defense.  No  wonder 
that  the  public  has  formed  the  habit  of  looking 
to  the  bar  for  guidance. 

And  yet,  while  private,  ofttimes  even  anti-so- 
cial service,  prevails  over  social  service  in  the 
practice  of  law,  while  the  majority  of  lawyers 
are  unable  to  distinguish  the  sham  from  the  gen- 
uine in  social  service,  it  would  be  well  if  the  pub- 
lic barkened  less  to  the  opinion  of  lawyers  and 
listened  more  to  the  advice  of  the  more  disinter- 
ested and  socialized  scholars,  social  workers, 
sanitarians,  school-men,  geologists,  and  econo- 
mists. Looking  as  these  do  to  the  public  for  em- 
ployment, they  have  not  trained  themselves  into 
taking  the  private  and  oftentimes  anti-social 
point  of  view. 

168 


THE  CONSCIENCE  OF  THE  EXPERT 

T  T  is  fortunate  that  at  a  time  when  social  in- 
•*•  terests  are  coming  to  be  more  distinct  and 
segregated  from  private  interests,  society  finds  at 
its  elbow  servants  of  a  new  type  of  loyalty.  For 
two  centuries  there  has  been  growing  up  in  the 
experimental  laboratory  an  ideal  of  exactness 
and  a  reverence  for  tested  fact,  since  without 
these  there  would  be  no  success  in  the  high  em- 
prise of  wrestling  from  nature  her  secrets. 
Brilliantly  justified  in  physics  and  chemistry 
the  laboratory  method  has  of  late  been  applied 
to  many  other  fields.  Nearly  all  branches  of 
inquiry  have  adopted  this  procedure  for  widen- 
ing the  bounds  of  truth.  The  standing  of  a 
university  as  a  research  institution  is  deter- 
mined by  its  laboratories.  The  buildings  of  a 
modern  medical  school  consist  almost  entirely 
of  laboratories.  Nowadays  the  first  thing  wise 
men  do  when  they  are  face  to  face  with  a  grave 

169 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

problem,  relating,  say,  to  food  values  or  venti- 
lation or  juvenile  delinquency,  or  whether  ani- 
mals reason,  or  the  harmfulness  of  adulterants, 
is  to  equip  a  research  laboratory  for  working  it 
out.  We  have  realized  that  the  old-fashioned 
reflection  and  discussion  are  but  a  poor  method 
of  finding  truth. 

The  spirit  of  the  laboratory  is  a  sense  of  the 
all-importance  of  fact,  a  nervousness  as  to  error, 
a  willingness  to  take  infinite  pains  in  measuring 
and  verifying.  Formerly  only  chemists  and  engi- 
neers went  out  into  their  life  work  with  this 
spirit.  But  of  late  laboratories  have  so  multi- 
plied in  the  universities,  the  research  bureaus  of 
government,  and  the  big  industrial  concerns,  that 
you  will  find  this  spirit  in  many  groups  of  social 
servants,  such  as  physicians,  psychiatrists,  crim- 
inologists,  statisticians,  sanitarians,  charity 
agents,  social  workers,  factory  inspectors,  and 
probation  officers.  The  lawyers  and  the  preachers 
have  scarcely  caught  it,  but  in  the  school  of  jour- 
nalism with  "Accuracy  always"  a  wall  motto  and 
a  daily  prayer  the  students  are  getting  it. 
Whether  the  conditions  of  newspaper  employ- 
ment will  permit  them  to  act  upon  it  remains  to 
be  seen, 

170 


THE  CONSCIENCE  OF  THE  EXPERT 

The  laboratory  technique  was  developed  in  the 
interest  of  inquiry  into  nature.  The  spirit  grew 
up  as  a  child  of  the  passion  for  universal  or  sci- 
entific truth.  But  there  is  no  reason  why  it 
should  not  be  also  the  handmaiden  of  the  quest 
for  practical  truth.  Taking  pains  to  eliminate 
error,  conscientious  observation,  scrupulous 
fidelity  in  reporting  what  has  been  found — surely 
these  need  not  be  confined  to  the  priests  of  pure 
science !  Why  may  not  the  newspaper  reporter, 
the  public  accountant,  the  census  agent,  the 
wage  investigator,  the  health  inspector,  the  psy- 
chopathic expert  attached  to  the  juvenile  court 
be  stirred  by  the  same  religion? 

This  laboratory  spirit,  like  the  spark  of  rad- 
ium incessantly  sparkling  at  the  bottom  of  the 
spinthariscope,  is  the  moral  capital  of  the  expert, 
the  divine  spark  that  keeps  him  loyal  and  incor- 
ruptible. It  is  this  asset  which  accounts  for 
the  rapidly  growing  willingness  to  use  him  in 
the  public  service.  There  is  of  course  no  such 
thing  as  "government  by  experts."  The  mali- 
cious phrase  is  but  a  sneer  flung  by  the  scheming 
self-seekers  who  find  in  the  relentless  veracity 
of  modestly-paid  trained  investigators  a  barrier 
across  their  path.  There  is  nothing  to  indicate 

171 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

that  experts  in  social  or  governmental  problems 
will  be  as  freely  chosen  for  legislature  or  for 
public  office  as  are  now  lawyers  and  business 
men.  But  it  is  certain  that  society  will  more 
and  more  make  use  of  the  expert,  not  so  much 
because  he  has  special  knowledge  and  the  correct 
method  of  acquiring  knowledge  as  because  he 
brings  to  his  task  a  certain  fanaticism  for  truth 
which  has  become  infinitely  precious  now  that  at 
so  many  points  powerful  selfish  agencies  are  at 
work  to  distort  or  suppress  the  truth.  Who 
could  have  foreseen  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
that  the  young  people  going  out  from  our  univer- 
sity laboratories  and  seminaries  would  show 
such  resistance  as  they  have  shown  to  temptation 
and  intimidation?  Something  of  the  high  pas- 
sion of  science  is  in  them  and  keeps  them  im- 
mune while  they  breathe  infected  air. 

This  conscience  of  the  expert  is  a  new  ally  in 
the  eternal  fight  for  the  public  weal.  Public 
spirit,  civic  passion,  loyalty  to  one's  oath  of 
office — these  are  moral  forces  of  long  standing. 
The  expert's  conscience  is  none  of  these,  al- 
though, of  course,  it  is  often  associated  with 
them.  It  is  not  at  all  the  same  thing  as  love  of 
your  fellow-men  or  devotion  to  the  state.  It 

172 


THE  CONSCIENCE  OF  THE  EXPERT 

may  appear  in  persons  who  are  not  in  the  least 
reformers  or  uplifters.  It  consists  in  a  deter- 
mination, come  what  may,  to  find  the  exact  truth 
about  the  matter  committed  to  one  and  to  re- 
port that  truth.  Whether  or  not  a  good  use  is 
made  of  this  truth  is  not  the  expert's  chief  con- 
cern. How  he  will  feel  as  to  that  depends  on  his 
quality  as  a  man  and  a  citizen.  His  conscience 
is  at  peace  once  he  has  communicated  the  truth 
it  is  his  business  to  discover  to  those  who  ought 
to  use  it.  And  this  is  natural,  for  there  is 
nothing  intense  that  is  not  narrow.  Army 
officer,  jockey,  and  prize-fighter — each  will  risk 
anything  for  his  honor  because  it  relates  to  just 
one  thing.  The  officer  must  not  run  away,  the 
jockey  "pull"  his  horse,  or  the  boxer  "throw" 
the  fight.  Likewise  the  honor  of  the  expert  con- 
sists in  just  one  thing,  viz.,  reporting  the  exact 
truth.  That  done  he  lapses  into  the  man  and 
the  citizen. 


173 


XI 

TRAINING   CITIZENS   WITH    "SPUNK"   FOE 
SOCIAL  SERVICE  J 


\\7lTHIN  the  last  twenty  years  many  of  our 
colleges  and  universities  have  caught 
something  of  the  social  view  of  things.  But  in 
the  schools  naive  commercial  ideas  prevail. 
Our  more  promising  youth  still  issue  from  the 
class-room  into  practical  life  with  glowing 
visions  of  a  personal  and  private  success.  They 
have  been  told  of  the  wonderful  chance  to  rise 
and  have  been  stimulated  with  the  assurance  that 
the  harder  they  studied  the  sooner  they  would 
get  up  in  life.  "Out  in  the  world,"  we  tell  them, 
"there  is  the  great  game,  and  there  are  the 
great  prizes.  Go  in  and  win."  Upon  many  of 
us  it  has  not  dawned  that  one  aim  of  our  public 
schools  should  be  to  make  it  impossible  for  our 
young  folks  to  accept  the  game  as  they  find  it. 

i  An  address  before  the  National  Educational  Association. 

174 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

Into  the  public  mind  have  filtered  during  the 
last  twenty  years  many  of  the  newer  ideas  about 
the  meaning  of  industry  and  trade.  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  business  men  have  been  drawing 
together  into  associations  and  barkening  to  the 
utterances  of  their  big  dominating  personalities. 
While  the  social  view  has  been  making  headway 
in  the  general  public,  the  contrary  manner  of 
thinking  has  been  hardening  and  defining  it- 
self within  the  business  world. 

Commercialism  has  become  self-conscious  and 
aggressive.  It  insists  that  business  is  an  arena 
in  which  the  strong-hearted  and  the  capable  con- 
tend with  one  another  for  the  Supremely  Desir- 
able, i.  e.,  money.  In  this  battle,  strength  has  a 
place  and  cunning  has  a  place.  The  "tricks  of 
the  trade"  are  to  be  tolerated  as  we  tolerate 
the  feints  and  ruses  of  the  prize-ring.  Obviously, 
the  rules  of  the  fight  should  not  be  changed 
while  the  fight  is  going  on,  and,  of  course,  the 
fight  is  going  on  all  the  time.  To  tie  down  the 
combatants  with  rules  limiting  the  use  of  their 
superior  strength,  adroitness,  or  cunning,  spoils 
sport  and  is  unfair  to  the  "better  man." 

In  these  commercial  battles,  natural  resources, 
working-men,  and  child  toilers  come  to  be  looked 

175 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

upon  as  mere  raw  material  to  be  moved  about, 
husbanded,  or  sacrificed,  as  the  exigencies  of 
the  fight  may  demand.  As  to  the  consuming 
public — for  the  sake  of  which,  in  sooth,  all  such 
enterprise  exists — it  lies  vague  in  the  dim  back- 
ground with  no  interest  in  the  fight  save  as 
humble  and  admiring  spectators.  The  hamper- 
ing of  the  contending  business  men  with  pure 
food  laws,  sanitary  requirements,  safety  regu- 
lations, anti-combination  acts,  and  finally  the 
meddling  of  a  trade  commission,  on  the  alleged 
behalf  of  the  consuming  public,  is  held  to  be  an 
intrusion  and  an  impertinence  inflicted  on  "legit- 
imate business"  by  the  demagogy  of  "politi- 
cians." 

In  some  of  the  professions  likewise  the  combat 
idea  is  well  established.  The  typical  newspa- 
per man  is  by  no  means  apologetic  as  to  the  sen- 
sationalism, red  ink,  fakes,  deceitful  head-lines, 
and  spiced  news,  by  which  he  has  beaten  his 
rival  in  circulation. 

Most  of  the  lawyers  are  warm  defenders  of 
the  time-hallowed  contentious  procedure  by 
which  our  courts  ascertain  the  right  and  wrong 
of  disputes,  despite  the  obvious  consideration 

176 


SOCIAL  SERVICE 

that  the  stronger  side  ought  to  win  the  case,  not 
the  side  with  the  stronger  champion. 

§  2 

Despite  the  impression  social  ideas  have 
made  on  the  worker  and  the  producer,  com- 
mercialism has  gone  on  developing  within  its 
sphere  until  it  is  becoming  a  religion.  Boards 
of  trade  and  chambers  of  commerce  are  its  tem- 
ples. The  business  interests  are  its  priests.  Its 
holy  days  are  Monday  to  Saturday.  Its  promise 
is  prosperity.  Its  first  great  commandment  is 
"Let  us  alone."  Its  plea  is  "Suffer  little  child- 
ren to  come  unto  me  and  forbid  them  not."  Its 
beatitude  is  "Blessed  is  the  employee  who  de- 
mands nothing  and  expects  nothing,  for  verily 
he  shall  not  be  disappointed."  Its  favorite  par- 
able is  of  the  man  who  burned  down  his  barn  to 
get  rid  of  the  rats. 

This  whole  conception  of  business  as  a  jungle 
fight,  with  its  implied  admiration  of  the  money- 
maker as  a  wonderfully  powerful  and  clever 
fellow,  its  thinly  veiled  contempt  for  a  man  who 
wins  only  a  livelihood,  its  cool  ignoring  of  the 
public  for  whose  sake  business  exists,  belongs 

177 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

in  a  class  with  trial  by  ordeal  and  judicial  com- 
bat. Slowly  there  is  rising  in  the  popular  mind 
the  idea  that  businesses  and  professions  are  not 
owned  by  the  men  who,  for  the  moment,  are  en- 
gaged in  them,  that  they  are  but  instrumental- 
ities for  meeting  the  wants  of  the  public,  not 
roped  rings  for  the  conduct  of  a  prize-fight; 
that  while  oceans  of  legal  verbiage  are  poured 
forth  on  the  question  whether  or  not  this  or 
that  business  is  "affected  with  a  public  interest," 
there  is,  in  fact,  no  legitimate  business  or  pro- 
fession that  is  not  affected  with  a  public  interest, 
and  should  not  be  required  to  square  itself  with 
the  ascertained  social  welfare. 

§  3 

The  social  service  that  is  supreme  is  not  some 
bit  of  charitable  work,  but  the  following  of  one's 
calling  as  service,  not  as  exploit.  Education  for 
social  service  is  to  open  the  eyes  of  the  young  to 
the  social  nature  of  their  work  in  life,  to  purge 
their  minds  of  a  current  false  notion  that  to 
enter  one's  life  work  is  to  take  a  hand  in  a 
poker-game  or  put  on  the  gloves  for  a  prize- 
fight. It  is  to  persuade  them  that  it  is  wisdom 
to  spend  wealth  for  more  welfare,  but  folly  to 

178 


SOCIAL  SERVICE 

spend  welfare— even  somebody  else's  welfare— 
for  the  sake  of  more  wealth,  that  industries 
should  be  run  to  yield  livelihoods  rather  than 
profits,  that  a  "living  wage"  should  come  before 
a  "living  dividend,"  that  commercialized  sports, 
commercialized  amusements,  commercialized 
newspapers,  and  commercialized  vice  are  tumors, 
not  flesh,  that  "prosperity"  in  the  business  man's 
sense  is  but  one  element  in  social  well-being  and 
not  always  the  greatest. 

The  next  social  service  is  to  fight  the  anti- 
social tendency  of  the  combat  regime.  Educa- 
tion for  social  service  ought  not  to  damp  the 
primal  impulses  of  moral  indignation.  Six  sev- 
enths of  American  teachers  are  women,  and  there 
is  danger  lest  they,  with  their  ladylike  ideas  of 
conduct,  quench  the  natural  pugnacity  of  our 
boys  below  the  point  of  even  chivalrous  "spunk." 
Certainly,  a  woman-taught  generation  is  show- 
ing an  alarming  willingness  to  take  oppression 
and  robbery  lying  down.  The  good  government 
movement,  I  observe,  attracts  many  mild-man- 
nered gentlemanly  citizens  quite  bluffed  by  the 
wardheeler's  invitation  to  the  use  of  the  natural 
weapons.  I  fear  our  schools  are  turning  out 
too  many  sissies,  and  that  the  rough  greedy  ele- 

179 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

ment  are  taking  advantage  of  it.  I  for  one  de- 
plore the  ladylike  citizen.  Social  service  im- 
plies not  only  a  willingness  to  be  spent  for  the 
common  good,  but,  as  well,  a  capacity  for  ire  and 
hard  hitting. 

§4 

One  way  to  divert  the  people  from  funda- 
mentals is  to  get  them  hurrahing  for  petty 
betterments.  I  sometimes  suspect  that  trivial 
social  service  is  employed  to  side-track  people 
from  economic  reform.  The  kept  newspaper  is 
strong  for  "swat  the-fly,"  anti-roller-towel,  and 
"clean-up"  movements.  Likewise,  it  seems  as 
if  little  charities  for  newsboys  or  tenement 
babies  or  hospitals  prosper  greatly  just  because 
they  raise  no  embarrassing  questions  and  leave 
the  public  with  a  soothing  illusion  that  some- 
thing adequate  is  being  done. 

It  seems  to  me  sometimes  as  if  the  springing 
up  of  a  great  variety  of  petty  charities  which 
annoy  nobody,  antagonize  nobody,  and  produce 
but  trifling  results,  is  to  be  interpreted  as  an 
endeavor  to  switch  the  public  mind  from  the 
big  social  services  involving  questions  of  fares, 

180 


SOCIAL  SERVICE 

prices,  wages,  hours,  and  conditions  of  work, 
which  antagonize  prominent  people  but  which 
also  hold  forth  the  possibility  of  raising  the 
plane  upon  which  great  groups  of  us  live.  Not 
that  there  is  a  purpose  behind  it  all;  but  those 
who  start  innocent  charities  get  support  and 
put  them  through,  while  those  who  promote 
movements  that  lessen  somebody's  profits  or  div- 
idends or  rentals  get  the  cold  shoulder  and  fail. 
So  that  the  promoters  of  social  service  learn 
the  lesson,  "Ask  for  reading-rooms,  or  fresh  air, 
or  teddy-bears;  don't  ask  for  less  risk  or  fewer 
hours,  or  for  more  pay  or  more  rights." 

A  democracy,  then,  will  use  its  schools  to  coun- 
teract the  anti-social  spirit  that  too  often  rad- 
iates from  the  big  masterful  figures  of  commer- 
cial life.  It  will  rear  its  youth  in  the  ethics 
of  brotherhood,  team-work,  and  responsibility. 
In  educating  for  social  service,  it  aims  at  some- 
thing greater  than  lessons  in  kindness  and  con- 
sideration. It  presents  life  from  a  new  angle. 
It  meets  current  notions  of  success  and  reward 
with  more  exacting  ideals  growing  out  of  a  new 
vision  of  social  welfare.  It  aims  to  turn  out 
youth  ready  not  only  to  make  their  calling  a 

181 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

service,  but  to  grapple  with  the  old  egoistic 
carnivorous  type  and  eject  him  from  places  of 
influence  where  he  can  be  a  sinister  model  and 
pace-setter  for  the  next  generation. 


182 


XII 

FOB  A    LEGAL   DISMISSAL  WAGE 


fTlHE  old  Russian  government — which  was  a 
conspiracy  for  helping  the  great  capitalists 
and  landowners  to  hold  down  and  exploit  the 
producing  mass,  though,  to  be  sure,  these  mag- 
nates were  often  enough  sick  of  the  corruption 
and  wickedness  of  the  bureaucracy  that  safe- 
guarded their  economic  interests — withheld 
from  Russian  working-men  the  right  to  strike 
by  requiring  them  to  give  their  employer  a  cer- 
tain number  of  days'  notice  before  quitting  his 
employ.  In  order  to  appear  to  "tote  fair"  be- 
tween labor  and  capital,  the  old  regime  offset 
this  by  a  law  requiring  the  Russian  employer 
to  pay  his  dismissed  employee  for  two  weeks 
beyond  the  term  of  employment. 

After  the  March,  1917,  revolution  an  endeavor 
was  made  to  enforce  this  law  and  to  give  the  dis- 

183 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

missed  workman  a  right  to  a  month's  wages  in- 
stead of  a  fortnight's  wages.  In  a  number  of  in- 
dustries the  month  of  leeway  was  established  by 
joint  agreement.  In  the  typographic  industry 
masters  and  men  agreed  to  a  three  months'  min- 
imum term  of  employment.  When  I  was  at  Baku 
in  September,  1917,  the  oil  firms  were  conclud- 
ing an  agreement  with  their  70,000  employees 
which  stipulated,  among  other  things,  that  on 
dismissal  an  employee  should  receive  a  month's 
pay  for  every  year  he  had  been  in  the  service 
of  the  firm.  The  employers  made  no  protest  on 
this  point  for  it  simply  made  general  a  prac- 
tice which  long  had  been  followed  by  the  best 
oil  companies. 

In  some  cases  the  demands  went  pretty  far. 
A  large  American  manufacturing  concern  near 
Moscow  was  asked  by  its  men  to  pay  three 
months'  dismissal  wages  for  every  year  of  ser- 
vice. On  the  break-up  of  the  office  force  of  a 
certain  American  life  insurance  company  with 
headquarters  in  Petrograd  the  men  put  in  a 
claim  for  six  months'  pay  all  around. 


I  do  not  know  how  the  dismissal  wage  idea 

184 


FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE 

has  fared  under  the  new  industrial  order  in 
Russia,  and  I  have  little  information  as  to  its 
actual  working  during  the  troublous  time  in 
1917  before  the  old  order  was  broken  up.  But 
I  believe  that  it  rests  on  a  sound  principle  and 
deserves  to  be  seriously  considered  as  a  means 
of  stabilizing  industrial  relations  in  this  country. 
In  a  mature  and  humane  civilization  great 
importance  is  attached  to  the  economic  secur- 
ity of  the  individual.  As  the  civil  service  de- 
velops, the  public  employee  is  protected  in  var- 
ious ways  against  abrupt  and  undeserved  dis- 
missal. In  the  universities  it  is  customary  to 
notify  the  instructor  some  time  in  advance  of 
the  termination  of  his  employment.  The  pro- 
fessor is  usually  given  a  year's  notice  or  else 
his  salary  is  continued  for  at  least  half  a  year 
after  his  services  are  dispensed  with.  School 
boards,  hospitals,  churches,  and  non-gainful 
organizations  generally  feel  that  it  is  indecent 
to  cut  off  a  faithful  servant  without  giving  him 
a  reasonable  time  to  look  around  for  another 
place.  Even  from  private  employers  profes- 
sional men  are  usually  able  to  secure  an  agree- 
ment not  to  end  relations  without  a  month  or 
more  of  notice. 

185 


On  the  other  hand,  the  practice  of  American 
industrial  employers  is  really  amazing  in  its 
lack  of  consideration  for  the  worker  found  super- 
fluous. No  doubt  many  firms  take  a  pride  in 
building  up  an'd  maintaining  a  stable  labor  force 
and  give  serious  attention  to  the  plight  of  the 
man  they  have  to  drop.  But  the  average  em- 
ployer seems  to  give  himself  not  the  slightest 
concern  as  to  what  is  to  become  of  the  worker 
let  out  through  no  fault  of  his  own.  I  have 
heard  of  a  firm  long  aware  of  the  necessity  of 
curtailment  waiting  till  half  an  hour  before  the 
evening  whistle  blew  to  post  a  notice  throwing 
hundreds  of  men  out  of  a  job  for  an  indefinite 
time. 

Since  Americans  are  not  generally  inhumane, 
the  barbarous  "firing"  policy  so  characteristic 
of  our  industries  can  be  accounted  for  only  as 
a  survival  from  the  time  of  the  small  concern 
when  the  competent  workman  let  out  could  walk 
around  the  corner  and  get  a  job  just  as  good. 
That  such  is  not  the  case  to-day  may  be  learned 
simply  by  interviewing  a  number  of  working- 
men  as  to  what  loss  of  job  has  meant  to  them. 
What  tales  of  tramping  the  streets  looking  for 
work,  of  rushing  hither  and  thither  on  a  rumor 

186 


FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE 

that  this  firm  or  that  is  taking  on  men,  of  return- 
ing night  after  night  worn  out  and  discouraged 
to  an  anxious  family,  of  the  sharp  cutting  down 
of  household  expenses,  the  begging  of  credit 
from  butcher  and  grocer,  the  borrowing  of  small 
sums  from  one's  cronies,  the  shattering  of  the 
hopeful  plans  for  the  children!  Here  are  real 
tragedies,  hundreds,  nay  thousands,  of  them  a 
year  in  our  large  centers,  yet  the  general  public 
goes  its  way  quite  unconscious.  No  wonder 
among  wage-earners  the  bitter  saying  is  rife, 
"A  working-man  is  a  fool  to  have  a  wife  and 
kids." 

What  of  the  far  greater  number  who  are 
employed  continuously  but  who  are  always 
worrying  lest  they  lose  their  jobs  without  warn- 
ing? From  conversation  with  wage-earners  one 
gathers  that  fear  of  finding  a  blue  slip  in  the 
pay  envelope  really  poisons  life  for  multitudes. 
So  long  as  many  employing  concerns  move  in 
their  present  ruthless  inscrutable  way,  not 
deigning  to  give  their  men  any  advance  hint 
of  what  will  happen  to  them,  there  will  be  resent- 
ment and  unrest  in  the  ranks  of  labor,  no  matter 
how  reasonable  the  hours  and  pay. 

187 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

§  3 

The  tragedy  in  the  situation  of  the  wage-earner 
in  the  modern  industrial  organization  has  been 
his  insecurity.  Step  by  step  we  have  lessened 
this.  Mechanic's  lien  laws  did  away  with  the 
risk  of  losing  his  pay,  postal  savings  banks  with 
the  risk  of  losing  his  savings,  "safety  first"  with 
the  risk  of  preventable  industrial  accidents, 
accident  compensation  with  the  risk  of  losing 
livelihood  by  injury  in  his  work,  pensions  with 
the  risk  of  a  destitute  old  age.  The  chief  in- 
security which  remains  is  that  of  losing  one's 
job.  How  can  we  lessen  that?  Bestow  upon 
the  workman  who  has  been  with  the  employer 
long  enough  to  establish  the  presumption  that 
he  is  of  value — say,  six  months — the  legal  right 
to  receive  a  fortnight's  free  wages  when  he  is 
dismissed  without  fault  on  his  part.  This  would 
give  him  two  weeks  to  look  about  and  find  him- 
self another  job.  Even  if  he  has  nothing  saved 
up  and  no  credit,  it  would  be  a  month  or  more 
before  his  family  came  into  acute  distress. 
There  are  few  competent  men  who  cannot  find 
a  job  in  a  month  unless  times  are  hard,  and 
during  hard  times  their  recourse  will  be  an  alto- 

188 


FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE 

gether  different  provision,  namely,  unemploy- 
ment insurance.  Still  more  important,  how- 
ever, is  the  consideration  that  the  man  who  has 
made  good  on  the  job  and  continues  to  make 
good  would  be  relieved  of  the  haunting  fear  of 
off-hand  dismissal.  It  will  not  pay  his  employer 
to  "fire"  him  for  frivolous  reasons,  and  if  busi- 
ness is  slack  the  men  let  out  will  be  men  recently 
taken  on,  who  have  not  yet  established  the  right 
to  the  dismissal  wage. 

The  dismissal  wage  should  not  be  looked  up- 
on as  something  held  back  out  of  wages  which 
a  man  will  never  get  unless  he  is  "fired."  It 
should  be  regarded  In  the  light  of  the  "compen- 
sation for  disturbance"  which  some  countries 
allow  the  evicted  tenant  who  has  farmed  the 
land  well. 

Of  course  the  man  who  "fires  himself"  by 
persistent  negligence  or  misconduct  should  get 
no  dismissal  wage,  and  since  an  unscrupulous 
employer  might  charge  fault  when  there  is  none, 
there  will  have  to  be  local  boards  to  hear  com- 
plaints on  this  score. 

The  employee  who  quits  of  his  own  free  will 
to  take  a  better  job  or  do  something  else  has 
no  claim.  But  since  such  an  employee  might 

189 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

"soldier"  or  grow  careless  just  in  order  to  get 
himself  "fired,"  the  employer  must  have  the  right 
to  escape  paying  him  a  dismissal  wage  by  prov- 
ing to  the  local  board  that  he  is  "soldiering." 
As  a  matter  of  fact  no  workman  could  afford 
to  get  the  reputation  among  employers  of  being 
that  kind  of  a  man. 

Until  we  have  accident,  sickness,  and  old  age 
insurance,  incompetency  arising  from  accident, 
sickness,  or  old  age  would  not,  of  course,  release 
the  employer  from  the  obligation  to  pay  a  dis- 
missal wage.  The  dismissal  wage  might  be 
combined  with  a  system  of  unemployment  in- 
surance by  providing  that  the  unemployment 
allowance  should  not  begin  until  the  end  of  the 
term  for  which  free  wages  are  paid. 

The  legal  dismissal  wage  should  not  become 
involved  with  strikes  and  lockouts.  Let  the 
rule  be  that  the  striker  has  not  relinquished 
his  job  any  more  than  the  man  who  has  been 
absent  on  account  of  sickness.  When  the  man 
resumes  his  job — whether  on  his  terms  or  on 
the  employer's — he  has  whatever  rights  he  had 
when  he  struck.  Only  in  case  he  applies  for  his 
job  and  is  refused  is  he  entitled  to  a  dismissal 
wage.  If  he  never  applies,  he  gets  nothing. 

190 


FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE 

Let  the  lockout  be  looked  upon  as  if  it  were 
a  temporary  stoppage  owing  to  a  fire  or  a  dearth 
of  fuel  or  raw  material.  When  the  men  are 
taken  on  again  all  is  as  before.  If  they  stay 
away  they  get  nothing.  If  they  are  refused  their 
old  jobs  they  get  the  dismissal  wage. 

If  the  employer  goes  bankrupt  his  men's  dis- 
missal wages  constitute  precisely  the  same  kind 
of  claim  on  his  assets  as  their  back  wages. 

Since  an  employer  could  avoid  dismissing  a 
man  by  cutting  his  wages  to  so  low  a  point  that 
the  man  would  quit  of  his  own  accord,  the  cut- 
ting of  a  competent  workman's  pay  below  the 
"going"  wage  for  the  time  and  place  should  be 
construed  as  dismissal.  Likewise  when  an 
employee  without  fault  is  reduced  to  a  lower 
position  in  the  works,  or  is  shifted  permanently 
to  harder  or  more  onerous  work,  the  workman 
should  have  the  option  of  staying  on  or  claim- 
ing dismissal  pay  and  leaving. 

What  of  "lay-off"  when,  on  account  of  slack 
business,  the  men  dismissed  are  not  replaced? 
Instead  of  dismissing  men,  let  the  employer  cut 
down  hours  uniformly  in  the  shop,  and  not  until 
he  cuts  them  below  half-time  shall  the  men  have 
the  option  of  staying  or  of  taking  their  dismissal 

191 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

wage  -and  leaving.  When  a  man  is  laid  off  be- 
cause there  is  not  enough  work  to  keep  him  busy 
but  the  job  is  supposed  to  be  held  open  to  him, 
let  the  dismissal  wage  payment  be  strung  out 
through  six  weeks.  If  the  employer  has  him 
back  sooner  he  saves  himself  something. 

A  board  to  decide  all  such  questions  should  be 
created  in  each  industrial  community.  One 
member  should  represent  employees,  another 
employers,  and  the  third  should  be  named  by 
the  State  industrial  commission. 

How  would  the  legal  dismissal  wage  affect 
employers?  On  all  hands  it  is  agreed  that  the 
amount  of  labor  turnover  in  American  industries 
is  scandalous.  I  know  of  an  industry  employ- 
ing 28,000  men  which  not  long  ago  hired  and 
"fired"  at  least  that  many  men  a  year.  Fifty- 
seven  Detroit  plants  in  1918  took  on  and  let  out 
two  and  a  half  times  as  many  men  as  they 
carried  on  the  pay-roll.  Few  employers  have 
any  conception  of  what  they  lose  by  such  a  turn- 
over. The  inquiries  of  M.  W.  Alexander  show 
that  the  hiring  of  22,031  unneeded  employees 
in  twelve  factories  involved  an  economic  waste 
of  a  million  dollars,  that  is,  3^  per  cent,  of  the 
total  wage  bill. 

192 


FOR  A  LEGAL  DISMISSAL  WAGE 

The  obligation  to  pay  a  dismissal  wage  would 
give  such  employers  a  motive  to  make  their 
practice  conform  to  that  of  those  thoughtful 
and  humane  employers  who  have  brought  their 
annual  turnover  in  some  cases  down  to  30  per 
cent,  with  profit  to  themselves  and  contentment 
to  their  employees.  They  would  find  it  paid  to 
give  attention  to  human  engineering,  to  install 
employment  managers  who  would  investigate 
why  an  employee  is  doing  badly  and  would  find 
a  way  to  remove  the  cause.  Before  letting  a 
man  go  with  a  fortnight's  free  wages,  they  would 
try  him  out  in  different  positions  or  depart- 
ments, in  the  hope  of  finding  the  right  place  for 
him,  or  would  even  provide  him  with  the  in- 
struction which  would  enable  him  to  make  good 
on  the  job. 

Just  as  the  burden  of  accident  compensation 
sinks  to  the  minimum  in  the  case  of  the  employer 
who  takes  the  most  pains  and  goes  to  the  most 
expense  to  eliminate  accidents  from  his  mill, 
so  the  burden  of  a  legal  dismissal  wage  will  be 
least  on  the  employer  who  picks  his  men  most 
carefully,  tries  them  out  most  speedily,  and  gives 
the  most  care  to  building  up  a  permanent  labor 
force.  By  providing  the  worker  with  an  added 

193 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

inducement  to  keep  a  good  job  and  the  employer 
with  an  added  inducement  to  keep  a  good  man, 
it  would  tend  to  stabilize  American  industry 
and  favor  the  survival  of  the  types  of  employer 
and  worker  society  ought  most  to  encourage. 


194 


XIII 

FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION  AND  THE  STRUGGLE 
FOR  RIGHT 

§   1 

T  N  our  time,  the  eaae  and  abundance  of  com- 
munication  have  profoundly  affected  the 
general  mind.  The  bulk  of  the  people  no  longer 
move  in  the  ruts  worn  by  their  ancestors.  Mere 
tradition  grows  steadily  weaker  and  rules  fewer 
subjects.  Hoary  beliefs  disintegrate  under  our 
very  eyes.  Nursery  teachings,  childhood  impres- 
sions, imbibed  prejudices,  are  no  longer  the 
principal  sources  of  private  opinion.  More  than 
ever  before  people  make  up  their  minds  accord- 
ing to  contemporary  knowledge,  impressions,  or 
ideals.  The  number  mentally  supple  enough  to 
change  their  position  on  fundamentals  after  the 
fortieth  year,  after  even  the  fiftieth  year,  rapidly 
grows.  In  a  word,  the  minds  of  people  seem 
to  be  passing  from  a  crystalline  state  to  a  plastic 
state. 

195 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

I  know  of  far-away  shut-in  valleys  in  which 
the  principal  topics  to  talk  over  during  the  long 
Sunday  visits  of  relatives  are:  who  has  become 
engaged,  how  the  cattle  are  doing,  and  how  the 
servants  are  behaving.  For  thousands  of  years 
personal  and  neighborhood  affairs  have  formed 
the  staple  of  conversation.  Choked  with  this 
weed  of  gossip,  the  channels  of  intercourse  per- 
mitted little  of  value  to  flow  from  mind  to  mind. 
With  the  growth  of  general  interest  in  large  and 
significant  events  these  channels  have  cleared 
themselves  as  if  by  magic.  The  secret  of  the 
seemingly  unlimited  elasticity  of  public  atten- 
tion, which  enables  it  continually  to  observe  and 
react  to  a  larger  number  of  remote  happenings, 
is  its  neglect  of  the  petty,  private  matters  that 
formerly  engrossed  it. 


A  century  ago  with  references  to  matters  of 
deep  public  import  the  people  were  like  a  jury 
with  one  or  two  members  paying  attention,  the 
rest  asleep,  musing,  or  gossiping.  Now  they 
are  like  a  jury  with  half  or  two  thirds  of  the 
members  alert  and  attentive  to  the  proceedings 
of  the  court-room.  As  more  and  more  this  jury 

196 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

sits  up  and  takes  notice,  it  becomes  a  better  tri- 
bunal to  appeal  to.  Even  the  friends  of  victims 
of  injustice  as  remote  as  incarcerated  Russian 
progressives  or  the  terrorized  rubber-gatherers 
of  the  Congo  or  the  Putumayo  deem  it  worth 
while  to  reach  and  inform  the  American  public. 
How  much  more  easily  will  the  wrongs  of  any 
maltreated  group  of  our  fellow-citizens  be 
pressed  upon  its  attention!  The  supplicant 
strives  nowadays  to  gain  the  ear  of  the  public 
as  of  old  he  sought  to  catch  the  eye  of  the  Roman 
proconsul  borne  through  the  street  in  his  open 
litter. 

To-day  the  public  pays  heed  to  outcries  that 
formerly  fell  on  deaf  ears.  By  thrusting  out 
much  gossip  and  trashy  fiction  it  has  made  room 
in  its  mind  for  the  dramas  of  social  life.  So 
many  readers  have  found  truth  movingly  pre- 
sented more  enthralling  than  the  yarns  spun  by 
the  story-tellers,  that  the  newspaper,  magazine, 
or  'book  that  readably  recounts  some  tale,  in- 
credible yet  true,  of  contemporary  oppression, 
that  throws  a  veracious  search-light  into  some 
sepulcher  of  corruption,  whited  with  pious  legal 
phrases  or  sanctimonious  pretexts,  is  likely  to 
gain  both  glory  and  money.  The  muck-rakers, 

197 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

despite  the  sensationalists  and  liars-for-profit 
that  follow  in  their  wake,  deserve  the  credit  of 
having  roused  a  great  many  dozing  jurors. 

Two  or  three  decades  ago  most  of  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  public  with  the  victims  of  wrong 
exhaled  into  thin  air  without  being  of  the  least 
direct  service  to  them.  Step  by  step,  however, 
instruments  have  been  fashioned  by  which  an 
aroused  public  may  make  itself  felt  in  a  very 
practical  way  in  the  issue  raised  in  a  convict- 
camp,  a  mill-center,  a  coal-field,  or  a  copper- 
district.  The  number  of  probes — private,  insti- 
tutional, State,  and  national — which  are  avail- 
able for  thrusting  into  an  ulcerous-looking  spot  is 
greater  every  year.  The  resentment  of  the  local 
powers  and  their  on-hangers  at  this  damaging 
interference  from  outside  is  very  naive.  Said 
a  lawyer  at  Lawrence  to  Mr.  John  Graham 
Brooks:  "We  are  trying  up  here  to  mind  our 
own  business.  I  would  n't  mind  a  bit  if  the  rest 
of  the  world  did  the  same."  "He  thought  a 
vigorous  purge  that  should  clean  his  city  from 
the  nausea  of  sociologists  would  be  a  good  begin- 
ning." But  the  State  of  Massachusetts  came  into 
the  Lawrence  situation,  then  the  Federal  Govern- 
ment. The  business  element  in  San  Diego 

198 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

imagined  it  could  harry  I.  W.  W.  disturbers  as 
it  pleased.  "But  damnation !"  said  one  of  them 
to  Mr.  Brooks,  "it 's  nobody's  business  outside 
this  town."  But  the  newspapers  looked  in,  then 
the  representative  of  the  governor,  lastly  the 
attorney-general. 

Then,  too,  the  collective  mind  has  got  itself 
hands  as  well  as  eyes.  Above  the  shame  and 
damage  of  such  revelations  local  powers  fear 
various  agencies  which  an  indignant  public  may 
employ  to  restrain  or  punish  unscrupulous  might. 
Besides  remedial  legislation  they  dread  what 
may  happen  from  the  intervention  of  a  State  or 
Federal  prosecutor,  a  public  utilities  commission, 
an  industrial  commission,  a  tenement-house 
commission,  or  a  State  board  of  health.  Hence 
the  felt  need  of  smothering  the  first  mutterings 
of  discontent,  of  throttling  those  initial  utter- 
ances which  may  attract  the  notice  of  the  big 
justice-loving  public  and  bring  into  the  delicate 
local  situation  all  manner  of  alien  and  unman- 
ageable factors. 

§  3 

Trade-unions  and  protective  labor  laws  have 
brought  about  great  improvement  in  the  condi- 

199 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

tions  of  many  groups  of  workers,  but  there  is 
no  justification  yet  for  slipping  into  a  mood  of 
complacency.  Industrial  accidents  have  been 
dealt  with  effectively  in  some  States,  but  no 
method  has  been  worked  out  by  law  for  dealing 
with  preventable  industrial  diseases.  The  hours 
of  women  workers  have  been  standardized  in  a 
few  States  during  the  last  few  years,  but  legis- 
lation has  done  little  to  correct  the  evil  of  an 
excessive  workingday  for  men.  Trade-unions 
have  secured  no  small  measure  of  independence 
and  security  for  the  skilled,  but  the  unskilled 
and  especially  the  casual  laborers  have  remained 
unorganized.  The  capitalistic  method  of  pro- 
duction continually  extends  its  sway  and  brings 
under  its  influence  new  groups  of  workers.  The 
organization  of  capital  has  outrun  even  the 
organization  of  labor.  In  many  fields  the 
employer  has  so  gained  in  power  that  the 
employees  find  themselves  under  a  quiet,  irre- 
sistible hydraulic  press  crushing  down  their 
manhood,  their  self-respect,  and  their  hope  of  a 
larger  reward  out  of  their  larger  product. 

Now,  if  ever,  labor  needs  every  weapon  which 
its  forefathers  gained.  Now  is  the  worst  pos- 
sible time  to  tolerate  the  abridgment  of  any 

200 


FBEEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

constitutional  guaranty  won  for  men  by  the 
conflicts  and  the  sacrifices  of  the  past.  And  yet, 
during  the  hist  dozen  years,  the  tales  of  the  sup- 
pression of  free  assemblage,  free  speech,  and 
free  press  by  local  authorities  or  by  the  State 
operating  under  martial  law  have  been  so 
numerous  as  to  have  become  an  old  story. 
These  rights  are  not  trampled  upon,  as  in  the 
days  of  George  III,  by  an  arbitrary  government 
determined  to  have  its  way  in  defiance  of  the 
popular  will.  They  are  attacked  at  the  insti- 
gation of  an  economically  and  socially  powerful 
class,  itself  enjoying  to  the  full  the  advantages  of 
free  communication  but  bent  on  denying  them 
to  the  class  it  holds  within  its  power.  So  it  is 
coming  about  that  the  weakest  and  worst-treated 
groups  of  wage-earners,  the  factory  women,  the 
mill  operatives,  the  casual  or  seasonal  laborers, 
the  miners  in  isolated  company-owned  camps, 
the  migatory  unskilled,  and  the  unemployed, 
who  least  of  all  can  afford  to  lose  any  lever  by 
which  they  may  raise  themselves,  are  having 
ancient  rights  wrested  out  of  their  hands  under 
the  pretext  that  their  exercise  relates,  not  to 
the  lawful  tactics  of  organizing  and  presenting 
demands  backed  by  the  threat  of  a  strike,  but 

201 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

to  rebellion  against  lawful  authority  and  to  the 
destruction  of  property. 


It  is  inexpressibly  shocking  that  the  rights  of 
free  communication  established  so  long  ago  at 
such  cost  of  patriot  blood,  time-tested  rights 
which  in  thousands  of  instances  have  vindicated 
their  value  for  moral  and  social  progress,  ac- 
cepted rights  which  in  the  minds  of  disinterested 
men  are  as  settled  as  any  principle  of  human 
conduct  can  be,  should  with  increasing  fre- 
quency be  flouted  by  strong  employers  and  set 
at  naught  by  local  authorities.  Are  the  agitators 
of  to-day  more  artful  or  inflammatory  than  those 
of  other  times?  Are  wage-earners  more  ignor- 
ant, less  self-controlled,  less  able  to  distinguish 
right  from  wrong  or  truth  from  error?  Is  there 
some  unrepresented  section  of  the  people  bent 
upon  subverting  our  form  of  government?  Is 
there  a  convinced  class  working  resolutely  and 
in  concert  to  bring  about  a  state  of  anarchy? 
No,  there  is  no  such  crisis.  If  freedom  of  com- 
munication could  be  established  in  a  time  when 
most  men  were  unable  to  read  and  write,  were 
ignorant  of  the  responsibilities  of  citizenship 

202 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

and  inexperienced  in  discounting  the  spoken  or 
written  word,  how  rock-fast  ought  it  to  be  to- 
day, when  virtually  the  entire  population  reads, 
and  the  traditions  of  self-restraint,  of  the  duty 
upon  the  people  of  obeying  the  law  they  them- 
selves have  made,  and  of  the  righting  of  wrongs 
by  orderly  procedure  have  become  deeply  rooted 
in  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  population ! 
No,  it  is  not  at  all  the  approaching  shadow 
of  anarchy  that  has  caused  Detroit,  Little  Falls, 
Lawrence,  Paterson,  Spokane,  Seattle,  San 
Diego,  Butte,  Missoula,  Paint  Creek,  Cabin 
Creek,  Cripple  Creek,  Las  Animas  County,  and 
a  number  of  other  towns  and  districts  at  various 
times  within  recent  years  to  turn  recreant  to 
American  principles.  The  constitutional  rights 
of  free  communication  have  been  denied  to 
socially  insignificant  persons,  sometimes  in  order 
to  prevent  the  exposure  of  local  political  cor- 
ruption and  crime,  but  usually  in  order  to 
spare  certain  employers  the  risks  of  a  successful 
strike  or  the  snaffle  collective  bargaining  imposes 
upon  their  arbitrary  .will.  Could  any  apostasy 
to  principle  be  more  contemptible  than  depriving 
the  weak  of  the  chief  weapon  by  which  they 
may  achieve  commpn  economic  action?  Yet 

203 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

nothing  less  sordid  than  this  seems  to  lie  .behind 
the  multiplying  interferences  with  free  assem- 
blage, free  discussion,  and  liberty  of  the  press. 
To  judge  from  the  lavish  use  of  the  club  and 
the  cell,  the  rantings  of  kept  newspapers,  and 
the  bombardment  from  the  big  howitzers  of 
social  defense,  one  might  suppose  that  nothing 
less  is  at  stake  than  monogamic  marriage,  the 
life  of  civil  officials,  and  the  institution  of  private 
property.  So  great  a  pother  are  the  profits  from 
long  hours,  low  wages,  false  measurement,  ar- 
bitrary fines,  speeded  labor,  company  stores,  and 
the  evasion  of  the  law's  requirements  of  safety 
and  sanitation  able  to  raise  when  menaced  by 
the  advent  of  an  intrepid  agitator  with  sugges- 
tions of  organization  and  strike.  A  mortifying 
anti-climax  must  it  be  to  the  good  citizen  who  has 
been  drawn  into  sanctioning  high-handed  meas- 
ures against  "disturbers"  to  find  later  under- 
neath the  "law-and-order"  movement  nothing 
but  the  pecuniary  alarm  of  a  handful  of  greedy 
and  arrogant  local  magnates,  who  by  the  unholy 
use  of  their  financial  power  have  been  able  to 
force  the  city  authorities,  the  police-courts,  the 
business  men,  the  pulpits,  and  the  newspapers  to 
fight  their  battles ! 

204 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

What  we  are  witnessing  in  recent  years  is  not 
at  all  an  anarchistic  movement  among  wage-earn- 
ers but  the  struggle  of  the  worst-paid  or  worst- 
treated  laborers  to  improve  their  position  and 
exact  the  treatment  due  to  men.  Does  any  can- 
did student  of  society  doubt  that  the  grievances 
of  the  sections  of  labor  which  are  being  organized 
by  the  I.  W.  W.  are  quite  as  real  and  serious  as 
the  grievances  of  which  in  times  past  the  rail- 
road men,  the  miners,  the  longshoremen,  the 
printers,  the  telegraphers,  the  iron-molders,  the 
structural  iron-workers,  and  many  other  groups 
of  skilled  working-men  complained?  These  past 
movements  for  the  betterment  of  conditions  were 
certainly  accompanied  by  strong  emotion,  bitter- 
ness, class  animosity,  irresponsible  leadership, 
Utopian  proposals,  and  lurid  rhetoric,  which  lent 
color  to  the  capitalists'  cry  that  law  and  order 
were  in  danger.  There  was  always  enough  wild 
language  and  violence  by  individuals  to  allow 
such  officials,  courts,  politicians,  newspapers, 
pulpits,  and  colleges  as  were  subservient  to  the 
employing  class  and  would  fight  the  labor  move- 
ment at  its  bidding  to  pose  as  the  saviors  of  so- 
ciety against  crime  and  spoliation. 

I  remember  how  in  1884  the  Knights  of 
205 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

Labor  leader  I  called  on  carefully  pulled  down 
the  blinds  before  he  would  talk.  And  yet  many 
of  the  reforms  his  organization  sought — restric- 
tion of  child  labor,  the  establishment  of  bureaus 
of  labor  statistics,  postal  savings  banks,  inheri- 
tance taxes,  the  use  of  arbitration  in  labor  dis- 
putes, the  gradual  introduction  of  the  eight-hour 
day — have  already  been,  or  are  being,  realized, 
and  few  disinterested  citizens  would  have  it 
otherwise. 

Does  not  the  distance  we  have  come  since 
then  in  recognizing  and  removing  remediable 
hardships  of  labor  suggest  that  we  may  have  a 
considerable  stretch  of  travel  ahead  of  us  in  the 
same  general  direction?  We  look  back  upon 
the  wrongs  and  needless  sufferings  of  a  bygone 
generation  of  labor  and  regret  that  the  scales 
did  not  sooner  fall  from  our  eyes.  We  wish 
that  the  labor  of  1884  had  not  been  denied  the 
protection  which  we  now  acknowledge  as  the 
right  of  labor.  But  a  generation  hence,  what 
rights  will  the  ill-paid,  floating,  seasonal, 
or  unskilled  laborers  enjoy  with  the  full  ap- 
proval of  all  the  better  elements  of  the  then 
society,  which  to-day  are  being  denied  them, 
while  their  organizations,  demonstrations,  pa- 

206 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

rades,  agitations,  and  strikes  are  being  de- 
nounced as  anarchistic  and  criminal?  If  in- 
deed the  public  has  nothing  to  learn  when  these 
sections  of  labor  gain  the  lime-light  and  a  voice, 
if  the  public  knows  all  about  the  frauds  and  ex- 
tortions of  private  employment  agencies,  the  sell- 
ing of  jobs  by  foremen,  the  conditions  in  con- 
struction camps,  the  violation  of  labor  laws  by 
employers,  the  oppressive  fines  for  alleged  bad 
work,  the  employer  system  of  espionage,  the  cut- 
ting of  the  piece  price,  etc.,  then  the  mass-meet- 
ings, parades,  and  demonstrations  of  labor  may 
be  prohibited  without  prejudice  to  their  cause. 
So  likewise  if  all  the  laborers  who  suffer  from 
the  same  oppression  are  perfectly  alive  to  their 
wrongs  and  are  acting  in  perfect  concert  to  ob- 
tain redress,  then,  perhaps,  it  will  make  no  dif- 
ference to  them  if  the  government  arrests  their 
speakers,  confiscates  their  literature,  jails  their 
editors,  and  forbids  their  gatherings. 


To  be  sure,  freedom  of  communication  opens 
a  way  for  voicing  false  and  pernicious  the- 
ories as  well  as  for  just  complaints  and  sal- 
utary propaganda.  To  facilitate  the  circula- 

207 


THE  SOCIAL  TBEND 

tion  of  true  and  valuable  doctrines  while  at  the 
same  time  checking  the  promulgation  of  fan- 
tastic or  baleful  ideas  would  be  good  social 
policy  if  only  there  were  a  sure  touchstone  to 
tell  the  gold  from  the  lead.  But  since  to  entrust 
discrimination  among  ideas  to  any  man  or 
board  subjects  communication  to  arbitrary 
judgment,  so  that  presently  it  ceases  to  be  free 
even  for  truth  in  case  the  truth  happens  to  be 
distasteful,  there  is  nothing  left  but  to  tolerate 
the  propaganda  of  false  doctrines  as  the  inescap- 
able price  to  be  paid  for  the  boon  of  liberty. 

Although  the  preaching  of  specious  folly  puts 
truth  and  wisdom  on  the  perpetual  qui  vive, 
it  would  be  strange  indeed  if  they  should  shrink 
from  the  test  of  free  discussion.  "Though  all 
the  winds  of  doctrine  were  let  loose  to  play 
upon  the  earth,"  says  Milton,  "so  Truth  be  in 
the  field,  we  do  injuriously,  by  licencing  and 
prohibiting,  to  misdoubt  her  strength."  When 
one  considers  the  enormous  artillery  of  talent, 
learning,  ingenuity,  and  eloquence  the  estab- 
lished order  is  able  to  employ  in  its  defense, 
when  one  reflects  that  wealth,  social  influence, 
the  school,  the  pulpit,  the  press,  the  professions, 
officials,  public  men,  and  the  persons  of  light 

208 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

and  leading  in  the  community  can  ordinarily 
be  counted  on  to  throw  their  full  weight  against 
a  propaganda  that  is  really  fanatical  and  sub- 
versive, one  wonders  why  society  should  be 
rocked  to  its  base  by  the  advent  in  a  mill  popu- 
lation of  a  few  labor  agitators  or  I.  W.  W.  organ- 
izers. Is  it  not  strange  that,  after  a  century 
of  free  communication  during  which  the  lit- 
eracy, intelligence,  discrimination,  and  self-con- 
trol of  the  plain  people  have  advanced  with  giant 
strides,  the  dominant  class  in  mining  and  in- 
dustrial centers  should  feel  called  upon  to  shep- 
herd their  wage-earning  fellow-citizens  and  by 
the  use  of  the  ban  protect  their  weak  and  callow 
minds  against  the  appeals  of  agitators? 

Let  us  not  sound  a  retreat  on  the  ground  that 
new  and  shattering  ideas  are  seeking  utterance. 

The  proportion  of  our  fellow-citizens  who 
respect  property  and  law  on  solid  rational 
grounds  and  are  proof  against  incendiary 
appeal  is  now  far  larger  than  in  times  past. 
Individuals  may  be  thrown,  off  their  base  by 
crack-brained  notions,  but  no  body  of  wage- 
earners  among  us  has  by  oratory  alone  been 
brought  into  an  inflamed  and  seditious  state 
of  mind.  Always  a  working-class  explosion  has 

209 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

been  preceded  by  long  mistreatment  and  oppres- 
sion. I  know  no  instance  in  which  workers  have 
generally  accepted  the  heresy  that  government  is 
necessarily  an  engine  of  the  capitalist  class,  until 
they  have  seen  the  laws  enacted  to  protect  them 
violated  with  impunity,  while  their  own  spokes- 
men and  leaders  met  with  outrage  from  the  police 
and  repression  by  the  lower  courts.  Nor  does 
the  doctrine  of  "no  agreements"  or  the  practice 
of  sabotage  take  root  among  wage-earners  until 
they  have  long  smarted  under  the  sense  of  griev- 
ances without  hearing  or  remedy. 

Counsels  of  desperation  rarely  elicit  response 
from  men  aware  of  enjoying  protection  and 
benefit  from  the  laws.  It  is  not  the  wage-earner, 
as  such,  but  the  wage-earner  that  is  intimidated 
and  abused,  who  is  aroused  by  bitter  and  fiery 
appeals.  What  is  the  magic  by  which  a  young 
stranger  on  a  soap-box  rouses  mill  operatives  to 
the  desperate  resolve  to  strike  and  starve  when 
all  the  time  the  bosses,  the  business  men,  the  pol- 
iticans,  the  editors,  the  teachers,  and  the  preach- 
ers have  plied  them  with  a  contrary  set  of  ideas? 
Is  it  not  that  the  latter  have  stood  by  uncar- 
ing while  their  fellow-citizens  were  treated  as 
something  less  than  men?  Had  the  local  scribes 

210 


FREEDOM  OF  COMMUNICATION 

and  Pharisees  but  lifted  up  protesting  voices, 
their  counsels  in  the  hour  of  crisis  would  not 
have  fallen  on  deaf  ears. 

Repression  of  agitation  tends  to  rally  all  the 
conservative,  lawabiding  working-men  to  the 
defense  of  those  of  their  class  who  seem  op- 
pressed. On  the  other  hand,  only  good  results 
from  a  scrupulous  regard  for  the  rights  of  the 
fractious  element  coupled  with  the  enlistment  of 
the  sober-minded  wagS-earners  in  efforts  to  solve 
the  social  problems  affecting  themselves.  Let 
me  quote  from  a  private  letter  from  an  au- 
thority on  the  labor  movement  on  the  Pacific 
coast: 

Last  winter  San  Francisco  was  burdened  with  an  ex- 
tremely trying  group  of  unemployed.  They  camped 
near  the  heart  of  the  city  and  suffered  from-  the 
stimulating  oratory  of  the  I.  W.  W.'s  at  all  hours  of 
the  day  and  night.  The  Labor  Council  was  called  up- 
on to  assist  in  solving  the  city's  problem.  The  members 
of  its  committee  soon  learned  something  of  the  diffi- 
culties that  surround  the  giving  of  relief.  As  a  result 
the  labor  papers  and  meetings  were  the  most  drastic 
in  their  condemnation  of  "grafters"  and  "crazy" 
oratory.  Complete  liberty  of  speech  and  assembly, 
combined  with  a  demand  that  the  more  conservative 
wage-earners  assist  in  solving  the  problem,  prevented 

211 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

what  might  have  been  an  extremely  serious  situation. 

Professor  Eaves  goes  on  to  say: 

The  history  of  the  sailors'  union  in  San  Francisco 
affords  an  instructive  illustration  of  the  way  in  which 
working-men  outgrow  radical  leadership.  Their  or- 
ganization was  effected  under  the  influence  of  the 
Internationalists.  A  glance  «at  the  document  published 
in  the  Appendix  of  Powderly's  book  will  show  that 
Burdette  Haskell,  an  early  leader  of  the  union,  held, 
views  quite  like  those  of  the  most  radical  of  present 
I.  W.  W.'s.  Probably  this  sort  of  fiery  doctrine  was 
needed  to  arouse  the  sailors  to  faith  in  their  powers  to 
better  their  conditions,  but  after  a  few  years,  when  the 
organization  settled  down  to  the  sober  business  of 
managing  its  affairs  in  an  effective  way,  such  hard- 
headed,  sensible,  law-abiding  citizens  as  Furuseth, 
Macarthur,  and  Scharrenberg  were  put  in  charge. 

The  tactics  then  for  controlling  subversive 
ideas  is  not  the  application  of  the  gag  but  the 
redress  of  real  grievances.  There  is  no  need  of 
the  hurried  resort  to  high-handed  tyrannical 
measures.  Our  social  order  is  not  so  weak  as 
its  more  vociferous  champions  imagine.  Our 
institutions  are  not,  like  the  walls  of  Jericho, 
to  be  leveled  by  a  blast  upon  the  trumpet.  What 
is  going  on  under  our  eyes  is  not  the  break-up  of 

212 


wociety  but  the  painful  struggle  upward  of  sec- 
tions of  the  laboring  class  which  have  been  in 
the  most  depressed  and  helpless  condition.  In 
their  struggle  with  the  powerful  their  initial 
weapons  are  the  unhindered  disclosure  of  their 
wrongs  and  free  discussion  of  plans  for  con- 
certed action.  For  organized  society  to  allow 
these  weapons  to  be  wrenched  out  of  their  hands 
would  be  connivance  in  one  of  the  greatest  in- 
iquities that  could  be  committed. 


213 


xrv 

WAR    AS    DETERMINER 


TT'AKL  MAKX'S  doctrine  of  economic  deter- 
•••*•  minlsm,  according  to  which  it  is  chiefly 
changes  in  the  technique  of  production  which  al- 
ter the  course  of  society,  needs  to  be  rounded  out 
with  a  doctrine  of  martial  determinism  which 
shall  show  how  much  the  relations  of  classes,  so- 
cieties, peoples,  races,  and  cultures  have  been  in- 
fluenced by  the  development  of  the  technique  of 
war. 

War  has  always  been  a  master  force.  A  phil- 
osophy of  history  becomes  a  vain  dream  in  view 
of  the  extent  to  which  the  current  of  history 
has  been  deflected  by  small  differences  at  criti- 
cal moments.  Greek  fire,  used  first  against  the 
Saracens  in  the  seventh  century,  probably  pre- 
served the  Byzantine  Empire  for  several  cen- 
turies against  the  Eastern  pressure  and  gave 

214 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

Europe  a  chance  to  become  strong.  It  was  the 
armor  of  the  crusaders  that  enabled  them  to 
roll  back  the  Saracens  and  maintain  for  two 
hundred  years  a  Latin  kingdom  in  Syria.  Only 
the  walls  of  Constantinople  and  Attila's  ignor- 
ance of  the  art  of  siege  spared  the  city  from 
being  laid  waste  by  the  Huns. 

The  native  kingdoms  of  Mexico  and  South 
America  were  overthrown  and  the  Indians  en- 
slaved by  a  handful  of  Spaniards  who,  however, 
had  the  enormous  advantage  of  possessing 
horses,  armor,  and  firearms.  But  for  gunpow- 
der, the  whites  of  this  country,  instead  of  sweep- 
ing in  a  single  century  from  the  Alleghanies  to 
the  Pacific,  might  by  now  have  outposts  as  far 
west  as  the  Father  of  Waters.  If,  in  the  thir- 
teenth century,  the  Slavs  could  have  met  the 
Mongols  with  guns,  they  would  not  have  fallen 
under  the  hideous  despotism  which  kept  them 
far  behind  the  other  peoples  of  Europe  in  devel- 
opment. 

As  one  to-day  reconnoiters  the  Great  Wall  of 
China,  that  serpent  in  stone  clambering  boldly 
up  the  steepest  slopes,  creeping  along  the  sheer 
precipices,  and  following  ever  the  comb  of  the 
mountains  in  order  that  the  ground  may  slope 

215 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

from  it  both  ways,  one  realizes  what  a  perfect 
checkmate  it  must  have  given  to  the  raiding  no- 
mads of  Mongolia.  Thanks  to  seventeen  hun- 
dred miles  of  such  wall,  the  Chinese  went  ahead 
undisturbed  until,  by  the  eighth  century,  they 
possessed  undoubtedly  the  most  advanced  civil- 
ization in  the  world. 

Thus  the  destiny  of  societies  and  civilizations 
has  turned  on  the  issue  of  battle,  and  this  has 
often  been  determined  by  the  technique  of  fight- 
ing. Warfare,  in  fact,  undergoes  an  evolution 
due,  not  to  changes  in  the  ethics  and  psyehol- 
logy  of  the  combatants,  but  to  invention.  Any 
new  weapon  or  tactics  which  proves  effective  is 
sure  of  early  adoption.  The  dropping  of  the  old 
but  inferior  is  much  prompter  in  the  military 
field  than  in  the  industrial  field,  for,  in  a  mat- 
ter of  life  and  death,  no  people  is  so  foolish  as 
to  follow  blindly  the  rut  of  the  past.  Be  it  never 
so  custom-bound,  a  race  will  discard  its  old-time 
weapons  and  tactics  of  fighting  once  it  has 
suffered  from  new  and  more  deadly  weapons 
and  tactics. 

Now,  within  our  own  time  the  evolution  of  war- 
fare has  been  greatly  accelerated  by  the  inven- 

216 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

tors,  and  the  trend  of  this  evolution  is  fateful  for 
the  group  development  of  mankind.  For  one 
thing  the  cumulative  effect  of  modern  martial 
inventions  has  been  to  push  warfare  constantly 
in  the  direction  of  capitalism.  The  amount  of 
lethal  capital  the  average  soldier  works  with 
lias  greatly  increased  while  the  cost  of  the  battle- 
ship has  grown  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
number  required  to  man  it.  The  overwhelm- 
ing growth  of  the  machinery  factor  has  for- 
ever laid  the  affrighting  specter  of  the  subju- 
gation of  the  civilized  by  brave  and  fecund  bar- 
barians such  as  broke  through  the  defense  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  The  easy  destruction  of  the 
dervishes  by  machine-guns  at  the  battle  of  Om- 
durman  settled  it  that  henceforth  the  barbar- 
ian is  out  of  the  running  save  as  the  instrument 
of  an  advanced  people. 

A  second  consequence  of  war  becoming  cap- 
italistic is  that  only  the  wealthy  or  highly  in- 
dustrial uatians  can  wage  war  with  any  prospect 
of  success.  The  money  cost  of  fighting  having 
grown  much  faster  than  the  blood  cost,  that  bel- 
ligerent is  doomed  to  defeat  which  has  not  either 
great  resources  and  credit  for  buying  war  ma- 

217 


terials  or  else  an  abundance  of  technical  knowl- 
edge and  industrial  skill  to  divert  to  their  manu- 
facture. 

A  third  consequence  is  the  greater  time  nec- 
essary for  fabricating  an  efficient  fighting  ma- 
chine. Big  guns,  turrets,  emplacements,  disap- 
pearing gun-carriages,  and  battle-ships  cannot 
be  improvised,  but  must  be  begun  months  be- 
fore they  can  be  used.  The  soldier,  too,  is  not 
to  be  made  in  a  day,  but  is  becoming  like  a  skilled 
artisan  who  must  be  trained  for  a  considerable 
time.  The  result  is  that  less  and  less  dares  a 
nation  to  consider  its  potential  defensive  re- 
sources as  equivalent  to  available  resources. 
Eeal  security  calls  for  preparedness,  and  prepar- 
edness becomes  steadily  more  costly  as  warfare 
grows  more  capitalistic. 

The  advance  of  invention  is,  moreover,  so  rapid 
that  war  capital  soon  comes  to  be  out  of  date. 
An  improved  rifle  is  adopted,  and  at  once  mil- 
lions of  rifles  of  the  old  pattern  become  junk.  A 
nation  lays  out  some  scores  of  millions  in  equip- 
ping its  army  with  thousands  of  field-guns  and 
suddenly  some  inventor  of  a  gun  of  longer  range 
or  quicker  fire  obliges  it  to  scrap  them  all.  The 
interval  between  the  proud  launching  of  an  iron- 

218 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

clad  and  its  last  service  as  target  for  the  guns 
of  a  younger  vessel  continually  shortens.  The 
consequence  is  that  the  burden  of  armed  peace 
approximates  that  of  war  and  the  nations  wel- 
come war  as  possibly  opening  a  door  of  escape 
from  the  crushing  weight  of  incessant  rearma- 
ment. 

§2 

Another  way  in  which  martial  invention  bends 
the  stream  of  social  history  is  by  altering  the  rel- 
ative strength  of  attack  and  defense.  Walls, 
moats,  drawbridges,  casemates,  mines,  disappear- 
ing gun-carriages,  armor-plate,  steel  turrets, 
abattis,  wire  entanglements,  anti-aircraft  guns, 
and  strategic  railways  are  landmarks  in  the  de- 
velopment of  defense.  Battering-rams,  mortars, 
siege-guns,  armor-piercing  projectiles,  asphyx- 
iating gas,  hand-grenades,  bomb-dropping  air- 
craft, torpedoes,  and  submarines  have  told  par- 
ticularly on  the  side  of  attack.  The  distinction 
between  attack  and  defense  signifies  most  in 
land  fighting.  In  sea  fighting  the  distinction  is 
less  important  and  in  air  fighting  it  disappears 
altogether,  the  reason  being  that  no  uniform  and 
fluid  medium  can  be  made  to  furnish  either  shel- 

219 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

ter  to  the  defenders  or  obstacles  to  the  assailants. 

Now,  the  relation  between  the  defense  and  the 
attack  of  a  given  terrain  is  an  imperious  deter- 
miner of  social  destiny.  When  defense  has  little 
advantage  over  attack,  numbers  count,  conquest 
is  easy,  the  little  peoples  cower  before  the  big 
peoples,  empires  become  more  formidable  the 
bigger  they  grow,  and  the  nations  are  in  unstable 
equilibrium.  When,  on  the  other  hand,  smoke- 
less powder,  high-power  firearms,  machine-guns, 
steel  turrets,  and  land  mines  make  the  defense 
many  times  stronger  than  the  attack,  a  state  that 
is  strong  in  defense  finds  itself  weak  in  invading 
the  territory  of  another.  Small  peoples  with 
powerful  neighbors  are  able  to  maintain  their 
independence.  The  aggressive  empire  is  held 
by  some  handful  of  brave  mountaineers  and  the 
nations  tend  to  remain  each  in  its  own  place. 

Those  who  believe  that  true  civilization  is 
spread  by  peaceful  radiation  rather  than  by 
force  of  arms  will  rejoice  when  the  developing 
technique  of  warfare  gives  a  great  advantage  to 
defense  and  will  grieve  when  it  allows  attack  to 
overtake  defense.  When  the  new  forty-two  centi- 
meter howitzers  at  a  stroke  wiped  out  most  of 
the  military  value  of  the  world's  forts,  the  fu- 

220 


ture  of  the  little  nations  and  the  peace-loving 
peoples  looked  black  indeed.  The  unexpected 
development  of  the  art  of  trench  resistance  has, 
however,  restored  them  some  measure  of  security. 
The  military  failure  of  the  Zeppelins  is  another 
ray  of  hope  in  the  gloom. 

Of  course,  no  one  would  wish  defense  to  be 
so  strong  as  to  guarantee  the  success  of  every 
revolt  and  hence  make  large  states  impossible. 
The  battering-ram  was  the  answer  to  the  mud 
walls  of  Babylonian  towns,  but  to  the  thick 
stone  walls  of  the  dark  ages  there  was  no  answer 
until  gunpowder  made  it  possible  to  mine  them 
or  breach  them  with  cannon-balls.  When  count 
or  baron  or  bishop  could  flout  the  authority  of 
any  king  not  strong  enough  to  beleaguer  him 
and  starve  him  into  submission,  the  state  be- 
came too  decentralized  to  fulfil  its  civilizing 
mission,  and  private  war  was  the  order  of  the 
day.  It  was  gunpowder  that  enabled  law  to 
quell  the  near-anarchy  of  the  feudal  regime. 

To-day,  however,  national  freedom  and  the 
independent  evolution  of  the  peoples  are  bound 
up  with  the  art  of  war  taking  such  a  course  of 
development  as  shall  make  aggression  costly  and 
dangerous. 

221 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

§3 

There  is  no  assurance  that  war  and  the  dread 
of  war  will  be  less  potent  in  deflecting  and  de- 
termining the  life  of  society  than  they  have  been. 
Indeed,  it  is  possible  that  the  hand  of  Mars  will 
be  heavier  upon  us  in  the  future.  The  improve- 
ment of  communication  lowers  those  natural 
barriers  and  wipes  out  those  distances  which 
formerly  gave  the  nations  a  sense  of  security. 
Moreover,  far  from  arriving  at  settled  spheres 
and  final  relations  between  the  nations,  we  find 
ourselves  in  a  tumultuously  dynamic  epoch 
which  will  certainly  outlast  this  century. 

There  is  population  pressure,  which  tends  to 
control  the  policy  of  Japan,  Russia,  and  Ger- 
many, and  will  eventually  shape  the  policy  of 
China.  The  diffusion  over  the  globe  of  the  arts 
of  saving  life,  long  before  the  masses  have  ab- 
andoned blind  multiplication,  threatens  to  sub- 
ject the  comfortable  peoples  to  violent  endeavors 
at  reajustment  on  the  part  of  the  teeming  peo- 
ples. If  surplus  population  does  not  migrate, 
it  must  at  least  find  a  vent  abroad  for  its  prod- 
ucts. Hence,  the  population  pressure  reflects 
itself  in  a  struggle  among  the  nations  for  colonies 

222 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

and  dependencies  to  serve  as  markets.  Since  the 
secretion  of  capital  goes  on  at  an  accelerated 
pace,  there  is  an  eager  quest  for  opportunities 
out  over  the  globe  to  invest  capital  in  the  profit- 
able exploitation  of  natural  resources.  The 
appeal  of  capitalistic  syndicates  to  their  national 
government  to  find  them  such  opportunities, 
to  protect  them  in  the  resulting  property  rights, 
and  to  checkmate  their  rivals  makes  states 
aggressive  and  unsettles  friendly  international 
relations. 

We  have  no  warrant  for  expecting  soon  an 
economic  equilibrium  among  the  different  regions 
of  the  globe.  Asia  and  Africa  have  been  making 
progress,  but  Europe  and  North  America  have 
been  forging  ahead  still  faster.  The  interval 
between  the  advanced  countries  and  the  back- 
ward countries  determines  the  eagerness  of 
the  former  to  act  economically  upon  the  latter, 
and  there  is  no  prospect  that  this  interval  will 
lessen  in  our  time.  And  it  is  precisely  the 
scramble  of  the  advanced  nations  to  take  part 
in  the  control,  settlement,  and  exploitation  of 
the  rest  of  the  world  which  constitutes  the  chief 
trouble-breeder  among  them. 


223 


§  4 

How  often  we  hear  said :  "This  is  to  be  the  last 
war!"  These  outbursts  of  destructive  human 
energy  so  shock  the  growing  humane  feeling  and 
are  so  alien  to  the  habits  of  thought  fostered 
by  industrialism  that  civilized  man  refuses  to 
recognize  their  inevitableness.  Yet,  if  anything 
may  be  safely  predicted,  it  is  that  wars  as  bad 
as  this  will  occur  in  the  future  unless  a  Great 
Union  be  formed  to  canalize  international 
rivalries  as  the  American  Union  has  canalized 
in.tersta.te  rivalries. 

No  doubt  this  generation  will  not  tolerate 
another  such  orgy  of  destruction.  Through  our 
time  war  will  be  known  for  what  it  is.  But 
when  the  cripples,  widows,  and  orphans  are 
gone,  when  invention  and  the  exploitation  of 
fresh  natural  resources  have  lightened  the  war 
debts  and  have  created  a  new  basis  for  national 
borrowing,  when  mothers  yet  unborn  have  reared 
millions  of  youths  to  be  bred  in  a  febrile  nation- 
alism and  inflamed  with  a  machine-made  patri- 
otism, then  the  dynasts,  the  Junkers,  the  traders, 
and  the  drill-masters  will  prepare  the  materials 
for  another  explosion  on  perhaps  a  still  vaster 
scale. 

224 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

Incredible?  But  where  is  the  force  that  will 
be  able  to  prevent  it?  May  we  look  to  religion 
for  any  clearer  or  more  authoritative  utterances 
as  to  the  wickedness  of  bloodshed?  Is  there  the 
slightest  prospect  that  the  peace  movement  will 
control  the  opinion-forming  agencies  and  the 
prestige  commanded  by  highly  organized  govern- 
ments reaching  out  for  lands,  markets,  and 
dependencies  in  the  less  developed  portions  of 
the  world?  Nor  will  the  clearest  demonstration 
of  the  economic  waste  of  war  and  armament  have 
more  effect  upon  commercial  minds  than  it  has 
had  in  the  past.  The  aggressive  nation  that 
forces  militarism  upon  its  unwilling  neighbors 
always  dreams  of  recouping  itself  by  conquests 
and  indemnities.  The  growing  aversion  to 
wanton  aggression,  instead  of  hampering  the  pro- 
vocative foreign  policy  of  statesmen,  simply 
obliges  them  to  resort  to  a  more  elaborate 
hypocrisy.  The  extent  to  which  the  people  may 
be  deluded  with  the  idea  they  are  dying  in  a  war 
of  defense  seems  limitless. 

In  the  absence  of  visible  menace  or  actual 
aggression  nothing  but  state-worship  will  induce 
the  common  people  to  face  the  burdens  and 
horrors  of  war.  How,  then,  if  among  the  masses 

225 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

there  spread  a  resentment  at  the  ghastly  sac- 
rifices they  are  called  upon  to  make  for  this  idol? 
Is  there  any  hope  of  a  turning  of  popular  opinion 
to  the  wholesome  internationalism  that  cap- 
tivated thinkers  of  half  a  century  ago? 

The  fact  is,  nationalism  to-day  has  a  far 
stronger  appeal  than  it  had  in  the  days  of  Cobden 
and  Bright.  The  evils  of  unregulated  machine 
industry  and  private  capitalism  have  opened  to 
the  state  a  new  sphere  of  service  and  have  led 
the  bulk  of  the  people  to  look  to  it,  to  trust  it, 
and  to  love  it  for  the  protection  it  affords.  The 
popularity  the  state  gains  by  its  salutary  inter- 
vention in  the  industrial  and  social  field  it  has 
very  cleverly  turned  to  account  in  winning  sup- 
port for  its  aggressive  policies.  Thus  much  of 
what  is  saved  by  its  beneficent  activities  is  poured 
into  the  insatiable  maw  of  armament  and  war. 
The  paternal  state  saves  the  working-man  from 
unguarded  machinery,  industrial  poisons,  and 
a  pauper  old  age,  only  to  oblige  him  to  perish 
miserably  in  battle  as  a  state  slave.  Under  its 
present  guidance  the  modern  state  has  proved  to 
be  something  the  working  people  can  neither  live 
without  nor,  alas,  live  with. 


226 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

§  5 

But  suppose  democracy  spreads.  What  if 
the  working  class,  instead  of  remaining  a  mere 
beneficiary  of  state  action,  should  succeed  in 
wresting  control  of  the  state  from  the  land-own- 
ing aristocracy,  the  capitalists,  and  the  traders? 
What  if  foreign  policies  were  determined  by 
working-class  leaders  or  by  statesmen  dependent 
upon  working-class  support? 

A  political  revolution  in  this  sense  would  solve 
our  problem  only  in  case  it  were  general.  Other- 
wise peace-loving  democracies  might  be  forced 
into  the  hated  path  of  armament  and  war  by  the 
pace-making  of  a  single  powerful  militarist  au- 
tocracy. Furthermore,  democracies  may  be 
reckoned  as  anti-militarist  only-  in  case  they 
limit  their  numbers.  The  sense  of  pressure, 
which  will  soon  appear  in  a  blindly  multiplying 
people,  can  be  successfully  appealed  to  by  the 
jingoist  demagogue  who  argues  for  breaking  by 
force  or  the  threat  of  force  into  the  preserves  of 
some  less  crowded  people.  With  mystic  clerics, 
a  priori  moralists,  sentimentalists,  militarists, 
aristocrats,  and  monarchs  at  one  in  teaching  the 
people  that  it  is  a  deadly  sin  to  restrict  the  size 
of  the  family,  population  pressure  seems  likely 

227 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

to  resume  its  ancient  baleful  r61e  of  gadfly. 

No  doubt  much  may  be  done  to  drag  foreign 
policy  out  of  its  dark  corner,  but  it  is  vain  to 
dream  of  putting  a  brake  on  the  chariot  of  Mars 
by  relegating  to  the  people  the  determination  of 
foreign  policy.  The  citizens  at  large  lack  the 
basis  of  a  reasoned  judgment  on  such  matters; 
so  that  their  vote  could  record  nothing  but  their 
comparative  confidence  in  the  champions  of  ri- 
val policies.  Idle  likewise  is  it  to  demand  that, 
before  a  nation  be  committed,  the  question  of 
peace  or  war  shall  be  decided  by  a  popular  ref- 
erendum. Aside  from  the  fact  that,  owing  to 
the  technique  of  warfare,  the  delaying  nation 
may  put  itself  at  a  grave  disadvantage,  there 
is  the  difficulty  that  the  people  are  ignorant  of 
the  interests  involved.  Much  as  the  people  may 
hate  war,  they  hold  some  things  as  worse  than 
war.  As  to  what  is  really  at  stake  in  a  dispute 
with  another  country  they  have  no  means  of 
judging  save  what  their  leaders  tell  them;  so 
that  their  vote  amounts  to  nothing  more  than 
an  expression  of  confidence  or  doubt  respecting 
the  statesmen  at  the  helm. 

Some  hope  much  from  the  admission  of  women 
to  the  electorate,  arguing  that  they  are  free 

228 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

from  the  innate  pugnacity  of  males  and  that 
those  who  bring  life  into  existence  will  instinc- 
tively recoil  from  the  policies  which  lead  to  its 
wholesale  destruction.  It  is  certain  that  if 
women  obeyed  the  promptings  of  their  own  na- 
tures their  participation  in  government  would 
strengthen  the  party  of-  concession  and  com- 
promise. But  there  is  little  indication  that  en- 
franchised women  are  going  to  register  in  poli- 
tics their  native  intuitions  and  reactions.  There 
must  come  first  an  intellectual  emancipation  of 
women  which  has  little  more  than  begun.  The 
readiness  of  most  women  to  believe  what  men 
tell  them  as  to  matters  remote  from  their  ken 
and  their  hysterical,  uncritical  response  to  the 
appeals  of  militarists  wearing  the  mask  of 
patriotism  forbid  us  to.  expect  much  from  their 
votes. 

§6 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  nations  taken  sep- 
arately have  no  power  to  extricate  themselves 
from  the  vortex  into  which  they  are  being  sucked. 
As  the  horizon  darkens,  a  people  so  far  from 
the  center  of  strife  as  the  Americans  find  them- 
selves obliged  to  abandon  the  traditions  of  a 

229 


THE  SOCIAL  TEEND 

century  and  to  begin  casting  their  sons  and 
their  substance  into  the  lap  of  the  war  god. 
Not  only  will  such  sacrifices  tend  to  grow  with 
time  but  they  will  be  made  use  of  by  militarists 
to  spur  jaded  peoples  across  the  sea  into  mak- 
ing still  greater  sacrifices  for  "defense  and  se- 
curity." 

It  is  a  great  pity  that  the  means  provided 
for  defense  admit  usually  of  being  employed  as 
Well  for  aggression,  and  therefore  may  inspire 
suspicion,  fear,  and  counter-arming  in  other 
nations.  If  there  were  a  kind  of  cannon  which 
would  go  off  only  when  on  home  ground,  or  a 
type  of  military  training  which  would  be  use- 
less away  from  the  national  soil,  the  govern- 
ment adopting  them  would  be  no  more  minatory 
than  if  it  girdled  the  country  with  cement-lined 
trenches.  The  submarine  torpedo-boat  did  at 
first  present  itself  as  peculiarly  a  weapon  of 
protection.  But  the  rapid  development  of  a 
sea-going  submarine  able  to  create  havoc  at  a 
long  distance  from  its  home  base  has  converted 
it  into  an  offensive  arm  of  great  deadliness.  The 
devising  of  the  superdreadnaught  carrying  guns 
of  a  weight  and  caliber  which  had  been  supposed 
to  be  possible  only  in  coast-defense  guns  has 

230 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

wiped  out  another  distinction  between  the  in- 
instruments  of  defense  and  those  of  attack. 

The  civilized  peoples  find  themselves,  there- 
fore, confronting  this  situation  :l 

1.  The  treaties  between  the  great  powers 
guaranteeing  the  security  of  the  little  peoples 
have  become  "mere  scraps  of  paper." 

2. "Warfare  has  become  a  capitalistic  enter- 
prise and  fighting  a  skilled  occupation,  so  that, 
more  and  more,  success  in  war  hinges  on  elabor- 
ate preparation. 

3.  The   armament  and   training  a  militarist 
government  desires  in  support  of  aggression  may 
be  secured  of  its  people  under  the  pretext  that 
they  are  necessary  for  national  safety. 

4.  The  prudent  preparations   a  peace-loving 
people  makes  for  defense  may  be  construed  by 
other  peoples  as  designed  for  aggression. 

5.  Armament  and  trail  ing  acquired  for  de- 
fense admit  of  being  employed  in  aggression  in 
case  the  nation  changes  its  attitude  toward  inter- 
national law  and  morality. 

6.  The  nation  that  outarms  the  others  runs 
no  risk  in  so  doing  and  may  be  rewarded  for 
its  preparedness  by  success  in  war. 

i  Written  at  the  close  of  1915. 
231 


THE  SOCIAL  TKEND 

7.  The  nation  that  is  first  to  disarm  or  that 
lags  behind  the  rest  in  preparation  for  war  runs 
the  risk  of  being  thwarted  or  beaten. 

8.  From  the  foregoing  it  follows  that  the  war- 
loving  nations  have  the  power  to  force  the  peace- 
loving  nations  into  the  gloomy  path  of  armament 
or  war,  whereas  the  peace-loving  nations  have 
no  power  to  force  the  war-loving  nations  into 
the  sunny  path  of  peace.     The  men  of  Mars 
set  the  pace  for  the  rest  of  the  world. 

A  cool,  relentless  analysis  of  the  situation  dis- 
closes, then,  little  ground  for  hopeful  anticipa- 
tion. On  the  contrary,  the  prospect  is  one  of 
the  blackest  that  humanity  has  ever  faced: 
a  spread  over  the  world  of  the  policy  of  competi- 
tive armament;  an  ever  larger  share  of  produc- 
tion shunted  into  the  bottomless  pit  of  prepared- 
ness; a  more  general  sacrifice  of  the  flowering 
years  of  male  life  to  military  training ;  a  gradual 
starvation  of  such  state  services  as  education, 
research,  public  recreation,  and  social  ameli- 
ortion — all  this,  punctuated  from  time  to  time 
by  colossal  wars  resulting  in  the  slaughter  of 
millions  and  the  laying  waste  of  populous  and 
flourishing  areas  of  the  globe. 

Such  is  the  appalling  outlook  if  we  continue 
232 


WAB  AS  DETERMINER 

on  the  national  line.  Is  there  no  door  of  escape? 
One,  indeed,  there  is.  A  thousand  times  groups 
of  men  have  faced  a  crisis  like  that  which  con- 
fronts the  nations.  The  well-disposed  have  been 
obliged  to  go  always  armed  and  on  the  qui  vive 
because  of  the  presence  in  their  midst  of  a  few 
bullies  who  encroached  upon  others  and  would 
not  submit  the  resulting  disputes  to  arbitration. 
A  traveler  informs  us  that  among  the  feud-rid- 
den Berdurani  of  northeastern  Afghanistan 

the  villages  and  fields  bristle  in  all  directions  with 
round  towers.  These  are  constantly  occupied  by  men  at 
enmity  with  their  neighbors  in  the  same  or  adjoining 
villages,  who,  perched  up  in  their  little  shooting  boxes, 
watch  the  opportunity  of  putting  a  bullet  into  each 
other's  body  with  the  most  persevering  patience.  The 
fields,  even,  are  studded  with  these  round  towers,  and 
the  men  holding  them  most  jealously  guard  their  lands 
from  anyone  with  whom  they  are  at  feud.  ...  If  even 
a  fowl  strays  from  its  owner  into  the  grounds  of  another 
it  is  sure  to  receive  a  bullet  from  the  adversary's  tower. 
So  constant  are  their  feuds  that  it  is  a  well-known  fact 
that  the  village  children  are  taught  never  to  walk  in 
the  center  of  the  road,  but  always  from  the  force  of 
early  habit  walk  stealthily  along  under  cover  of  the 
wall  nearest  to  any  tower. 

This   recalls   the  chronic   strife   among  the 
233 


THE  SOCIAL  TREND 

Scotch  Highlanders  of  olden  times  and  the  Al- 
banians of  to-day,  the  vendettas  of  Corsica,  the 
feuds  of  Kentucky  mountaineers,  and  the  hered- 
itary enmities  between  adjacent  Chinese  villages 
— all  due,  not  to  love  of  combat,  but  to  the  ab- 
sence of  law.  In  the  Icelandic  saga  of  Burnt 
Njal  we  see  very  clearly  that  domestic  peace 
has  been  brought  about,  not  by  the  spread  of 
the  spirit  of  reasonableness  and  love,  but  by  the 
creation  of  courts  the  awards  of  which  have 
force  behind  them.  Men  united  to  create  and 
to  support  legal  institutions,  not  out  of  friend- 
liness, but  because  they  had  found  their  feuds 
intolerable.  On  the  whole  the  pacific  disposi- 
tion has  been  the  offspring  rather  than  the 
parent  of  the  regime  of  law. 

Now  the  only  way  of  escape  of  the  advanced 
nations  from  the  ruinous  results  of  their  inevit- 
able competition  for  place  and  advantage  in  the 
backward  parts  of  the  globe  lies  in  their  com- 
bining to  create  an  organization  provided  with 
the  means  of  adjudicating  disputes  and  enforc- 
ing awards.  Thinking  in  terms  of  the  nation 
is  destroying  the  people  of  Europe  at  the  rate 
of  ten  thousand  a  day.  Is  it  not  high  time  we 
were  thinking  in  terms  of  some  Inter-nation, 

234 


WAR  AS  DETERMINER 

League  of  Peace,  World-federation,  OP  other 
vast  unit  capable  of  keeping  the  peace  without 
stereotyping  the  status  quo  or  hindering  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  and  the  success  of  the 
adapted? 


235 


Date 

JUN  11 

- 

N     61 

965  rt 

9  t 

I 

UC  SO/TURN  WOONAl.  LBWW  f  «O.ITV 


~A~001  345602' 


